5In the Aftermath chapter1 Hope
by Hardwing
Summary: I write my next fic and see that it becomes too large, so I publish it now in three parts. The first part Hope show the hatching of the gargoyle my readers know as Lucifia.
1. Hope

5. In the Aftermath(1/3) Hope  
  
"How you have fallen from heaven, O morning star, son of the dawn!"  
Isaiah 14:12  
  
07.08.03; 23:98; Demona's Mansion:  
  
Demona sat in her room and looked on the newest report of her company. All was going well.  
  
It was unusual for her to take the work of Nightstone with herself in the night, but it diverted and she needed it so much. Else she would have gone to the secret floors underneath her mansion where she kept great parts of her magical artifacts and the things that she had gathered over the millennium, in her laboratory. She kept these to learn new spells or to try and reconstruct the full spell of collective amnesia that she had unfortunately destroyed four nights before.  
  
But she had to stay in the upper parts of the building in case Angela or her caramel sister came to say hello or if her old teacher wanted to check to make sure that she was not planning the destruction of mankind.  
  
Whatever, she had to divert herself anyhow and anything was better than to revel in memories of a time long ago, which had finally ended on the night 4 days previously. Suddenly, she heard a bark and looked down to Shade who was sitting beside her chair and looking out into the night, outside the doors of her balcony, and was now wagging her small tail.  
  
Demona looked through the glass door and smiled weakly when she saw two familiar shapes behind it.  
  
"Come in" she said, "the doors are open."  
  
The doors opened and Desdemona entered together with Angela, both smiling at Demona.  
  
"Daughter, Sister, how are you?" Demona asked and saw how Angela knelt down to stroke Shade, who was seemingly happy to have visitors.  
  
"Wonderful, and you?" Desdemona asked, even so with a smile.  
  
"I have some work to do for Nightstone," she lied.  
  
"Are we disturbing you?" Angela asked, looking up from Shade.  
  
"No, no!" Demona tried to explain. "It's just some business reports from my firm lords." She smiled "but why am I the chief of my company for if I can't decide myself when I can work or not?"  
  
Desdemona nodded and Demona raised herself from her chair, but not without throwing a short glance at her sister's stomach.  
  
~It has healed well. ~  
  
"You're wearing your hair short again?" Desdemona asked with a look at her sister's head.  
  
This was true, because of the incident four nights ago. First, from the sword of her sister's mate and later from the fire. She had lost much of her hair and so decided to cut great parts of it completely so that she could wear the same haircut like a teenager. Not that she liked it mind you, or that she could say this to her sister.  
  
"Mpff," Demona responded "an incompetent human, who dare called himself a hairdresser, cut too much so I had no other choice. Naturally, I saw to it that he was fired the same day."  
  
Desdemona nodded, "of course."  
  
"What brings you to me?" Demona asked finally and Angela raised even so.  
  
"We missed you mother." Angela answered at once "besides, there is nothing else to do."  
  
"Well I have some snacks in the refrigerator," Demona offered "we could go downstairs and make a little meal."  
  
Her skills as cook were terrifying, she did not need this since she couldn't die through this she ate and her skills as a hostess were miserable, mainly because she had never been one, since Puck definitely did not count as one. But she knew that eventually Angela or her sister would come one night and so she had bought what she knew her caramel sister and what she guessed her daughter liked to eat. She had even bought some food that she knew her old teacher liked, just in case she did come, but she doubted that Deborah would even taste it, in case it was poisoned.  
  
Desdemona shook her head. "Sorry sister," she said "we ate already with the clan just some minutes ago, but are you interested in a little talk? It has been a long time."  
  
Demona hesitated shortly, but finally nodded. It had been a really long time and neither of them was surely there to talk about what Deborah had come to Berlin to speak to her about.  
  
"Why not" Demona answered "Let's go down."  
  
So she led both of the women down, past the room where she had gathered her weapons on the walls and into the dining room, the only room with more than one chair.  
  
Angela noticed that, besides of some old garnitures, her mother still hadn't took her whole equipment from Europe or where ever she had took it to... or she used definitive less things to live with than Elisa.  
  
"Make yourselves comfortable," Demona said "if anybody wants something to drink or so... "  
  
Her guests shook their heads, so Demona sighed and sat down next to them.  
  
"Well... " Demona started, unsure of what to say. "How fares the clan?" That was all she could say, as her skills in chatting were more than bad.  
  
"Oh very good," Desdemona explained "the hatchlings learn very eagerly. Brooklyn teaches them now to write and we expect that the eggs will hatch soon."  
  
Demona nodded. "Yes," she explained "at around this time it was the mating season back in Moray... It is good that they will hatch in this year, so they don't have a completely different rhythm than the other rookeries in the world."  
  
Desdemona appreciated this, as Gargoyles mated in a 20 years rhythm and so the eggs hatched. 1998 was again such a year and since the eggs hatched now, they would later have no problems to find friends or mates outside this clan of the same age. It had indeed been a lucky accident.  
  
"Besides of the hatchlings... " Demona started, "when will they ascend? I mean, the hatchlings of Moray are so 4 years older of the Wyverns, how do you regulate this?"  
  
"They will ascend in two years" her rookery sister explained. "The clan has talked about this and thinks that it is the best thing that all hatchlings ascend together, even when this means that some will ascend later and some earlier."  
  
Demona nodded, as she thought that the clan would regulate it so and closed her eyes. Then she looked on Angela "you have a half-brother amongst them."  
  
Angela's eyes widened and Desdemona seemed even shocked.  
  
"What?!" They asked in union and Demona nodded.  
  
"He has my eyes and wing structure, even so my forehead" she explained "the one with the brown-Grey skin and white hair that he has from his father."  
  
Angela leaned back in the chair, "Wow" she looked on her mother again "you had a mate in Moray?"  
  
Demona shook her head. "No mate," she explained "it was just a Breeders Moon... Goliath has surely explained to you what happens then?"  
  
Angela nodded "this... is fantastic mother." She answered with a smile "I can't wait to speak with him and I know which hatchling you mean." She looked to Desdemona "what is his name?"  
  
"Connor." Desdemona answered and Demona nodded, before she abruptly realized that she had no reason for nodding "I have spoken with him some times before... He is very intelligent." Desdemona looked into her sister's eyes "and he speaks seemingly in admiration of his *aunt.* He doesn't know does he?"  
  
Demona shook her head "no. And please, don't let him know."  
  
Angela looked on her mother in wonder "why?"  
  
Demona sighed "you see daughter, it surely won't bring him any advantages to be seen as my son... Or would you say that I am, at the moment, in your clan a person who would be considered the Gargoyle of the year?"  
  
"It is your clan too mother!" Angela started "and Connor has a right to know."  
  
"Firstly Angela..." Demona began "I am not clan and I don't want to be." When she saw the hurt look in her daughter's and sister's eyes, she continued. "You see, I don't fit in the clan and this does not have anything to do with what happened 1000 years ago. I am simply not the kind of person who would risk my life for what Goliath and the clan stand for."  
  
"And what is this in your eyes sister?" Desdemona asked.  
  
"Subjugation under the humans." Demona said simply and saw in Desdemona's eyes that this was the answer that her sister had feared.  
  
"You know that isn't true." Desdemona answered, but Demona simply laughed.  
  
"Come sister," she explained "you follow the humans rule, the human justice system and protect them... How else shall I call it?"  
  
"We have made progressions!" Angela started, but Demona shook her head.  
  
"Our race is not yet recognized as an intelligent species besides that of the humans" Demona lifted a talon "by one authority."  
  
"The New York Police do so." Desdemona noted.  
  
"No," Demona started "one police district do so, lead by one captain and I don't see the fact that they use our race as reserve cops, or better police dogs as an act of recognizing." On this Desdemona and Angela, the police dogs, looked hurt, so Demona added more calmly. "Maybe Captain Chavez is honest in her help for our race, but just because she lets some of the clan accompany her officers doesn't mean recognition. Besides, such posts can switch, what if she is killed tomorrow and someone who is not so merciful with us gets her post?" Demona shook her head "there has never been such who helped us... But you know such people who did otherwise has ever been more... And better armored."  
  
Angela looked on her mother ~I hoped she would have changed her opinion~ she thought ~but seemingly, there is still a long way to go... Why can't she see that humans are our friends~.  
  
"But sister you have to see... " Desdemona started, but Demona lifted a claw and made her quiet.  
  
"Listen sister," Demona began "we could talk about this topic for the rest of the millennia and it would lead to nothing. You and the others have your opinion, I have mine and we are both much too different to come to one point about this. I have spent so the last millennia trying to show the other clans that I was right and even the ones, like the one in Paris, who had nearly or partly been destroyed did not want to see. It costs me this millennia until I realized that they... " She looked on her daughter and then her sister "you can't see it any other way. It is just the way you are... I am not so."  
  
Demona sighed "so you see sister, I finally gave it up to try and convince the other clans of my position, even so yours, so please let us not argue about something we both know we can't solve. And even if this... disagreement about humanity would not be there, I still couldn't be with the clan. I am still too different and have some enemies who would bring you in danger."  
  
Angela shook her head. "We have faced the Hunters and Macbeth... " Angela noted "who else is there?"  
  
Demona smiled weakly "oh there is still danger outside..." She noted, looking in the air "some have been destroyed," she sighed "others have not."  
  
She looked on her daughter again. "This is even so one of the reasons why I will leave the city in some weeks."  
  
This shocked Angela and Desdemona very much.  
  
"Sister this... " Desdemona started.  
  
"Mother it is... " Angela began.  
  
Demona sighed. "Please, it is not so easy for me either" she tried to explain. "But it is the best I can do. I have already explained to you why."  
  
"Sister," Desdemona said, "you can't be serious."  
  
Demona shrugged her shoulders "I had decided this even before I came here" she answered "I wanted to settle my affairs with the clan and some other business, which I have had. Staying here would in the end just mean problems for the clan, either through me or my enemies."  
  
Angela shook her head. "Mother, I thought we could finally spend some time together." She explained sadly.  
  
"We can," Demona tried to calm her "I will still spend some weeks here so we will have enough time."  
  
~Will I?~ Demona asked herself ~I planned to move in two weeks back to Germany!~ But with a look to her daughter, she sighed. ~A few weeks more will not kill me... or the clan~  
  
"And even when I move away," Demona restricted "the world has become small in the last years, I will visit you often."  
  
Angela was definitely not convinced. "This isn't enough for me and surely even so for Connor."  
  
"Or me!" Desdemona added angrily "tell me sister, what is it that drives you away from us? The fact that you think we are slaves... watch dogs of the humans or that you think we are weaklings who can't face your enemies?"  
  
Demona looked deeply into her sister's eyes.  
  
*"To make this clear, if anyone tries to attack me. I'll break her neck." Lucifia said and grabbed Desdemona, who senselessly tried to free herself, at her neck.*  
  
"No sister," she lied "it is simply that because of our different philosophies, the clan and I will collide sooner or later if I stay."  
  
"And the enemies you mentioned?" Angela asked, "do you think we could become a weakness for you?"  
  
Demona closed her eyes and leaned back. ~How can I make them see?~  
  
"Listen," she said and looked at her guests "it is more the opposite. I may become the greatest problem the clan has." She sighed, "you have no idea what trouble my enemies can cause."  
  
~Absolutely no idea~ she added in thought.  
  
"As clan, we help one another when we have problems sister." Desdemona started "we stand together when one enemy threatens one of us and it does not matter how large this enemy is."  
  
Demona shook her head "To repeat my point: I AM NOT CLAN, besides sister I am immortal, I don't need help."  
  
Desdemona knew that her sister wouldn't argue with her in this point, so she tried something other.  
  
"You said you have enemies... " She started "which one?"  
  
Demona's face hardened "even if I were to give you names, I would put you in danger." When she saw that this answer definitely did not satisfy her sister, she added "believe me, if I would believe that the clan could do anything, I would perhaps consider it, but they can't."  
  
Desdemona sighed, "okay sister," she said "but if there is ever anything we could do for you, please ask us."  
  
Demona nodded.  
  
Angela looked at Demona, as she knew her mother would not give her anymore answers so she gave up and came back to the original topic.  
  
"I still can't see why we can't tell Connor that he is your son?" She said.  
  
"He is lucky so," Demona noticed "and he was so back in Moray. He never missed it... If he does and if he asks after his mother one night then I will tell him the truth, but not now. Please accept this."  
  
Angela looked on her mother and nodded "I will mother... But I think I will have a special look on him now."  
  
Demona nodded "I am happy that you do so." She answered.  
  
"But," Angela continued "have I anymore siblings?"  
  
Demona shook her head at once. "No," she answered with certainty "you have no other siblings wandering through the world, believe me."  
  
Angela nodded... ~A pity.~  
  
"Sister," Desdemona started "if you think that you are alone with your opinion about humans, you are wrong. Kronos and Ajax... Together with large parts of the clan have the same opinion. They rebel against Goliath's course and try to undermine his position as leader, like Brooklyn's as second."  
  
Demona leaned back, ~this are news~. "And Kronos is?" She asked and added quickly "or Ajax?"  
  
"Ajax is the name our crested brother has chosen," Desdemona explained "Kronos is the one who even so fought against Goliath's appointment as leader and yours as second."  
  
Demona nodded, she remembered him all too well.  
  
"I suppose my... betrayal has firmed his position in the clan?" Demona asked and Desdemona nodded slightly, still unsure of this part of the history.  
  
"This and the absent recognition of the humans." Desdemona answered.  
  
"Thank you for this information."  
  
Desdemona and Angela looked on her. "Why?" Her daughter asked.  
  
"Because now I will definitely not argue with Goliath before the clan." Demona sighed "see, I was honest when I said that your relation to the humans is your business and so are the things in the clan... I do not wish to interfere and if I were to argue with Goliath, I might undermine his position in the clan."  
  
Desdemona and Angela looked at each eyes in wonder. Finally, Desdemona answered. "This is considerate of you sister." She answered.  
  
Demona simply shrugged her shoulders. "It is not because of any love for Goliath," she explained "but just because I don't want to interfere."  
  
"Has anything else happened to you?" Desdemona asked, "I mean, else than your new haircut... By Nightstone perhaps?"  
  
Demona shook her head. "No. " She answered "I had success in taking over a company in Canada, which I have tried to do since last month."  
  
When she saw the disinterest in her guest's eyes, she sighed. "It may not be the most interesting thing in the world for you, but on this way I earn my money."  
  
Angela nodded "we know mother."  
  
"Well then, perhaps you will tell me how the rest of the clan is so?" Demona proposed and her guests accepted.  
  
08.08.98; 02:11; Demona's Mansion:  
  
They had talked for nearly 3 hours about everything, how the clan came along in the new world, Desdemona and Angela about their mates, Demona about some of her journeys around the world without going into details. They even spoke about their hatchlinghoods and Demona discovered that some of the things her sister spoke about had already sunk into the darkest part of her memory and she was happy that there was somebody who could refresh this.  
  
"It is late," Desdemona noticed finally "I promised my mate to glide with him tonight."  
  
Angela nodded "and I promised to read a new book with Broadway tonight." She added.  
  
Demona smiled weakly "of course" she said, "it was nice to see you."  
  
"What if you were to return this favor sister?" Desdemona asked "we would like it if you would come tomorrow night to have a meal with the clan."  
  
Demona winced, this was definitely not her thing. "No sister I..." She started  
  
"Mother please," Angela interrupted "it would mean so much to me and the hatchlings. Have I mentioned that the ones of the former Moray clan miss you very much?"  
  
Demona hesitated. She did not want to go because she knew that this would surely mean a confrontation with her old teacher. That and there was the fact that she had practically promised Connor to come and tell him and his siblings some stories. Even though nobody, besides Demona, could remember this, she felt bound by it and this meant more to her than a confrontation with her old teacher.  
  
"Okay, you have won," she said with more resignation in her voice than she felt. "When?"  
  
Angela's face lighted up "tomorrow night at 22:00." She said "Oh mother you will see, it will be great."  
  
Demona nodded, not really sure of this and accompanied her guests to the balcony.  
  
"Until next night." Desdemona said and leapt in the air.  
  
"I'll wait for you mother." Angela said and embraced her mother.  
  
Demona nodded and saw how the two female gargoyles vanished into the night then she looked down on Shade.  
  
"Me thinks you will be happy to see the rest of the clan again soon?" She noticed and Shade barked happily.  
  
Demona stroke Shade's head and looked out into the night, unsure what the future might hold for her.  
  
08.08.98; 21:27; Castle Wyvern:  
  
Demona landed in the courtyard and sat Shade down, who at once ran away, obviously to meet the other beasts.  
  
Demona did not look around, as she didn't need to.  
  
"Well old teacher, I have nothing dangerous with me. Neither a gun nor a sword to threaten the clan." She spoke to the darkness "search me if you want, but on any case, come out of your hiding place!"  
  
Demona heard a light snarl and didn't need to turn around to know that her old teacher had now emerged from the darkness, her eyes glaring red.  
  
"You are the weapon" an angry voice declared behind Demona "and even if I were able to take you your claws and fangs, you would still be one."  
  
Demona slightly turned her head around and saw Deborah's eyes, which to her surprise weren't red, but icy.  
  
"Well, this is what you trained us for?" She asked her old teacher "To be sharp as the dagger you like to wear?" Her eyes remained in these of her old teacher and she saw how a glimmer of red in the older gargoyle's eyes sparkled, remembering all too well her last talk with her pupil back then.  
  
Demona sighed, remembering all too well how far their discussion could go. "I'm not here to harm anyone, but have been invited to come here. I will try to make no trouble and you will do even so and if you can't stand my sight then we can keep out of the other's way, can't we? The castle should be large enough for this!"  
  
Deborah now stood beside her former pupil.  
  
"I don't avoid places in my own home!" She answered icily, but now Demona sensed not so much anger like before.  
  
"Good, then go where you want!" Demona suggested and then suddenly she noticed something or more accurately. Had something to notice.  
  
"I see the courtyard has been renewed?" She said and pointed to the ground where some stones seemed newer than the others.  
  
Deborah nodded slightly "yes, it suddenly fell in five nights ago," she explained, still with a hard look on Demona. "Xanatos said it had to be some kind of structural damage, which had not been noticed when the castle had been set together here."  
  
Demona nodded, ~the spell has worked all too well. ~ Then she laughed sarcastically, "he should have asked my architects," she said, "Nightstone's workers are much better."  
  
Deborah glared at her. "Sure they are," she declared "but Xanatos's workers don't betray us."  
  
Demona's fists tightened and she looked angrily into her old teacher's eyes.  
  
"See..." She did not speak any further since the happy voice of her daughter interrupted her.  
  
"Mother!" Angela called out to her, excited, and Demona turned to her. "It is wonderful that you have come."  
  
~At least there is one who greets my coming~ Demona thought sarcastically.  
  
"Hello daughter" she said calmly, "I said I would come in time!"  
  
Angela looked uneasily at Deborah "am I interrupting something?"  
  
Demona shook her head. "No, Deborah has just welcomed me" she looked deep into her old teacher's eyes. "Shall we go in?"  
  
"Why not." Deborah answered and went off to the castle doors.  
  
Demona looked after her old teacher and her eyes showed in this moment more than Demona ever wanted to show.  
  
"Give her time," Angela, seeing into her eyes, interrupted her mother's thoughts "she'll forgive you."  
  
"I'm not interested in what she thinks of me... Or her forgiveness." Demona said coolly, but even in her own ears, it sounded like a bad lie.  
  
Her daughter knew this, but did not comment. Instead, she lay down a hand on her mother's shoulder and smiled weakly.  
  
"Let's go in." Angela suggested calmly and her mother nodded. So both gargoyles walked inside the great hall.  
  
It was not yet as full as Demona had supposed. Some of the gathered gargoyles turned their heads around when they saw that the rogue gargoyle had entered, but few held the view or even glared angrily on her.  
  
~A progress~ Demona thought ~or maybe my daughter and my sister simply have asked them to do so? ~  
  
"Mother." Angela said and Demona noticed that she had sunk into her thoughts.  
  
"Mhh?" Demona answered and looked to her daughter.  
  
"It is still another 30 minutes before the meal starts" Angela explained "why don't we walk around a bit?"  
  
Demona nodded and walked with her daughter through the corridors of Wyvern.  
  
"Will the detective take the meal with us?" Demona asked cautiously, as she still hated this blasted human who had hindered her so often and the thought to eat with her did not make her happy, but somehow it would perhaps be better than the meal with her old teacher.  
  
"Yes, but Elisa will be a bit late. She has duty tonight," Angela answered "even so, she takes irregularly meals with the clan, as her duty roster hinder her most times."  
  
"Pity" Demona said and looked around. While they spoke, they passed some gargoyles that looked on Demona and then returned to their business.  
  
~Seemingly, I am not as bad a person here as I am supposed to be~ Demona thought  
  
"Tell me daughter. I have not seen my other rookery brother, the one Xanatos has named Coldsteel, here until now." Demona said "what is with him?"  
  
Angela stopped. "You don't know?"  
  
Demona looked on her in wonder "what?"  
  
"After you brought the three souls back in Coldstone, there was a fight in him." Angela explained "Coldsteel tried to bring Othello to attack Goliath so that they would kill each other and he could have Desdemona. He was nearly successful in this and when Xanatos gave them the new bodies, he attacked the clan again."  
  
Angela looked in her mother's eyes "Othello and Desdemona were on their quest to stop him when they got the news that you brought back the clan and we were able to restore them completely. Since this time, nobody has seen him again."  
  
Demona shook her head "pity, I thought my brother would have been able to hold his desire to my sister longer than this... " She said almost with regret, but then shrugged her shoulder "whatever, Sevarius still has the cell sample, so it is still possible to help him."  
  
Angela nodded and walked further while her mother followed her, once more deep in her own thoughts.  
  
~Oh how interesting! ~  
  
She nearly missed that Angela had stopped in front of a door.  
  
Demona looked at her daughter while she tried to remember what was behind this door, back in the old times, but failed.  
  
"What shall we do here?" Demona asked her daughter, a bit uneasy.  
  
Angela smiled, "well there are some gargoyles who would like to see you." She explained and opened the door.  
  
What Demona saw, made her smile. This big room had seemingly been transformed into the hatchling room for the clan's hatchlings of both ages who all seemed to be gathered there. They were gathered around a female gargoyle, who Demona knew as one of the storytellers of the clan. Even Bronx and another beast, a female with red skin and two large horns above its forehead, that Demona did not know the name of, sat beside one of the hatchlings on the ground.  
  
But whatever story the female gargoyle was telling became instantly quite unimportant when the hatchlings saw who had arrived.  
  
"Aunt Demona!" Was the happy greeting of the hatchlings, mostly of the rookery from Moray, but even the hatchlings from the former Wyvern clan were seemingly happy to see her, even when they stayed behind while the older hatchlings ran to Demona with sheer laughter.  
  
Demona smiled her first true smile since she had arrived at the castle and kneeled down when the hatchlings ran to her and embraced her eagerly.  
  
"Uff, hey you're crushing me!!!" Demona said with a laughter and Angela looked on her in wonder, as she had never heard her mother laugh for any reason that most persons, with a normal sense of moral, would see as funny.  
  
"Aunt!" "We missed you!" "Where have you been?" "Will you tell us stories?" "Have you faced the Hunter again?"  
  
"Not all at once!" Demona ordered with a smile.  
  
She looked around the bunch of hatchlings who were in some way more her children than Angela ever could be. "I've missed you, too." she said softly with a quick look to Connor "All of you, but I had some business to do in other parts of the world, but now I can spent some time with you. Yes, I have faced the Hunter again in the last 1000 years and I can tell you many stories about my encounters with them as about many other things."  
  
Demona looked to the storyteller of the clan, a brown skinned female with long orange hair, "If that is okay?" Since her reputation in the clan was still bad, she feared that the female might have something against the former clan's greatest enemy telling the hatchlings stories, but her fears proved wrong.  
  
"Naturally, there is nothing which speaks against this, but first after the meal." The female spoke calmly, being defeated by the pleading views of the hatchlings, but then she added fast "If I can listen even so."  
  
She looked deep into Demona's eyes "I'm interested in stories, too."  
  
Demona nodded, ignoring the hatchlings for a moment. It was clear that she wasn't just interested in Demona's life experience, but wanted to make sure that Demona would not influence, with her stories, what the hatchlings thought about humans or better yet, what they thought about the clan.  
  
"Sure." Demona answered calmly and luckily the hatchlings did not notice the power between them.  
  
"Well why don't you tell me what has happened to you since you awakened here?" Demona asked and added in a more serious voice, with a short look to Connor, "have you improved your fighting skills?"  
  
Angela looked on her mother in wonder and then smiled when she saw how the hatchlings of the former Moray Clan, proudly, told Demona their progressions.  
  
~Seemingly, mother is as good in being a rookery mother as in being a leader~ Angela thought with a short feeling of pain ~what would it have been like to have her with me while I was a hatchling?~  
  
But these thoughts were fast forgotten when she saw the smile on her mother's face and the happiness in her eyes.  
  
08.08.98; 22:08; Castle Wyvern, Great Hall:  
  
The whole clan had gathered to take their meal. Even Demona who sat, much to her indisposition, nearly in the centre of the hall beside Angela and, for her taste, much too near by Goliath and her old teacher who sat directly in front of her.  
  
The meal was served. It was roast pork with fried potatoes and the clan threw themselves happily onto it, especially Broadway. During a little Smalltalk with her daughter, Demona learnt that Xanatos had to open two new kitchens to supply the rapidly enlarged clan, while Shade chew happily on her large bone to her master's feet.  
  
But during the whole time, the teacher looked on Demona with a sparkle in her eyes, which made Demona feel uneasy.  
  
Finally, Demona couldn't bear it any longer and spoke to the old soldier beside his mate.  
  
"Well Hudson" Demona started "how have you been?" She asked this without true interest, just to better the more than weak atmosphere and her empty glass.  
  
"Aye lass," the old soldier started calmly "it is all well. My right upper leg has felt a bit weak since Lucifia has pinned it with my own sword on the ground of the courtyard, but else it is great."  
  
It was a great understatement to say that when Demona realized what Hudson had just said she was shocked. Indeed, Deborah saw with greatest joy how her former pupil nearly choked to death through the water, which suddenly refused to glide down her throat.  
  
When Demona had managed this, she looked around in the faces of the clan who had suddenly become damned quiet. Some looked on her with gloating; others with suspicion and even some glared.  
  
Some elders herded the hatchlings out, surely to keep them uncertain about what had just happened.  
  
She looked into her daughter's eyes and saw no hatred, but much happiest gloating and knew that this was a situation she would not come out so easily like she had 4 days before.  
  
~Damn!~ Demona thought and looked back to her old teacher whose eyes sparkled with sarcasm.  
  
"Well Demona," the old teacher started "now you see that your little spell, which so unfortunately had delete our memories of that nice night 4 days ago, has been undone by us."  
  
"But how... " Demona started perplex, but then realized the easy answer.  
  
"I should have beheaded that damned Fay long ago!" She hissed angrily.  
  
"Puck was really very helpful Demona!" Goliath started.  
  
04.08.98; 21:23; Castle Wyvern, Helicopter airship:  
  
Xanatos smiled when he embraced his son, who had jumped out of the helicopter to embrace his father and then he embraced his wife whose eyes glittered in desire for her husband.  
  
"I missed you David." She whispered into his ear and Xanatos smiled his most charismatic smile  
  
"I know," he answered "I am a person nobody wants to leave so easily!"  
  
Fox beat her husband on his shoulder for this little impertinence, but couldn't hide her smirk.  
  
"Ahem" a dry voice from the helicopter started and Xanatos sighed and looked up to see the most wooden servant in the world standing with Fox's bag in his healthy hand before the helicopter.  
  
"Hello Owen, how was the flight?" Xanatos asked with a grin, as he knew that Owen would not make an jump in the air and scream *wonderful*.  
  
Owen did not disappoint him. "Adequate Mr. Xanatos," he answered "but may I ask what has happened with the courtyard? Seemingly it has been damaged, since there is a hole in it."  
  
Xanatos shook his head "there were defects in the structure of the courtyard, which led to the collapse of it," the billionaire explained "but I've already ordered a team that will repair it."  
  
The servant laid the bag down. "But the architects you had ordered, said it would be alright for perhaps an even further 1000 years." Owen noted.  
  
"Mhh yes, I should sue the architects for the money I've paid them." Xanatos answered "if I let them come through with it, I even so could sell Xanatos Enterprises to Nightstone at once."  
  
"This isn't what I meant sir. It is... " Owen stopped suddenly in the middle of his sentence. "Well it is better," he started and laid his glasses in his breast pocket and then he whirled around with an unbelievable speed and suddenly, where once there was a wooden human, now stood a lively Fay. "My turn!"  
  
Xanatos looked at the Fay in wonder "Puck, what is this?"  
  
"Well," the Fay said with a bride grin "seemingly someone has cast a spell on you, so it is my turn to find out if this harms Alex in any way."  
  
Xanatos frowned, "a spell?" He started "what sort of spell?"  
  
"A spell, which blocks and forms memories." The Fay said and floated around Xanatos as if he wanted to smell him "ah! And now I feel that it is Demona's magic."  
  
This made Xanatos feel damned uneasy as he, like the others, had thought that Demona had changed, so why should she do this? When he thought about the spells Demona had cast before, it shuddered him.  
  
"Can you neutralize it?" Xanatos asked calmly.  
  
"Oh yes, nothing easier than this!" The Fay answered with a grin.  
  
"By the Fay's power. Let this mortal spell be cut like a flower." He spoke and with a finger snip, he ended it.  
  
Xanatos looked at first perplexed and then hard when the true memories of this night came back.  
  
"David, what has happened?" Fox asked worried "what has Demona done?"  
  
"She killed her daughter!" Xanatos answered calmly.  
  
Fox's eyes became big in shock "Angela is dead?"  
  
Xanatos shook his head, "no Lucifia, Demona's other daughter." When Fox looked even more confused, he sighed "but she had to do it... I think."  
  
He looked to his wife "I'll explain later" and then to Puck "can you restore the memories of the clan of this night? And I mean just the clan and not the humans in the city, otherwise it might become a bit rough."  
  
"Is there any threat, which might threaten Alex?" The Fay asked and Xanatos shook his head  
  
"No," the billionaire answered "Demona has taken care of this already."  
  
Puck sighed, "no, big Daddy's order is clear. I can just use my magic to protect or to teach Alex... " The Fay started, but then he grinned "fortunately, this might just be the right time to teach Alex how to undo spells of mortals."  
  
Xanatos nodded. ~Demona sure won't be pleased.~  
  
04.08.98; 21:52; Castle Wyvern, information centre:  
  
"Ah," Xanatos said when he saw Brooklyn enter "so everyone's gathered."  
  
"Yes and what for?" Goliath, who stood beside Xanatos, asked.  
  
Xanatos looked around. Goliath, Brooklyn, Desdemona, Othello, Angela, Deborah and Hudson were gathered there and Puck flew with Alex in his arm a bit away from them.  
  
"Well, to make it short. You, like the whole world, are victims of a spell spoken by Demona, which deleted and replaced the memories of the night two days before." When Xanatos saw how all the Gargoyles were shocked and Deborah angry, he added. "It was no hostile act, indeed you all had agreed with it although Demona's spell was seemingly a bit more effective then she told us."  
  
"What has happened?" Goliath asked angry.  
  
Xanatos sighed, "it is not so easy to explain Goliath," he told the lavender Gargoyle "so with your agreement, Alex will undo the spell."  
  
Goliath nodded and on this cue, Puck floated into the middle of the room with Alex.  
  
"Alright, now do it like I showed it you my little apprentice" Puck said to Alex.  
  
The infant nodded and made some strange gestures with his hands, on what the present Gargoyles in the room blinked in wonder when the memories returned.  
  
"THAT DAMNED, CURSED, HONOURLESS, LYING DECEIVER!!!!" Deborah roared, her eyes blazing red. "THIS FILTHY LITTLE RAT! THIS TREACHEROUS SNAKE!"  
  
"Oh," Puck, who held his hands over Alex's ears, said "seemingly this is not a gathering for little Alex and it is already late, so I'll put him to bed."  
  
With this, the Fay disappeared leaving Xanatos and the Gargoyles to discuss the situation.  
  
Deborah made her point clear. "That's it, I will skin her alive!" She ended her thoughts of two nights before on how to kill Demona in the most painful way. "This damned person, who is not even the shadow of a gargoyle, has tricked us for the last time!"  
  
Hudson laid a hand on his more than furious mate's shoulder, but first Goliath's powerful voice calmed her down.  
  
"We will do nothing like this" he ordered with a hard look on his teacher. "Demona wasn't responsible for the massacre at the shopping mall, neither had she another way to ensure the safety of the clan than to delete the memories of the world from this night. You can't blame her for that, as we were also included in this."  
  
Deborah starred disbelieving on her leader. "She tricked us!" She noted angrily "first, she lead us into a trap to Lucifia and then she played even with us. SHE LAUGHED ABOUT US! And not enough, no she even lied to us when she said that the spell wouldn't affect us!"  
  
Goliath sighed "I knew that the spell would influence us even before she spoke it and when she would have told us the truth from the beginning, I would not have changed my opinion... It was the only way."  
  
Deborah shook her head "are we to let her get away with this so easily again?" She asked, unbelieving, "I can't believe this! Not again!"  
  
To Goliath's surprise, even Angela joined in. "She is right fath... " She corrected herself fast ". leader. Mother owes us at least an explanation!"  
  
"And an excuse!" Othello added, "I can still feel the kick she gave me!"  
  
"Aye leader," Hudson said, "after all the clan has gone through, we have a right to learn why this happened."  
  
Goliath nodded slightly. "Yes, but we can't simply go to her mansion and ask her," he noted "she surely won't give us it so easily."  
  
"Then we should bring her here and interrogate her!" Deborah demanded.  
  
Goliath shook his head, "she would refuse and how this will end, you already know."  
  
Deborah grumbled and wanted to answer that this time they surely won't underestimate Demona, but Angela started.  
  
"Then perhaps we should show her that she is not the only one who can fake!" Angela said with a smile and when she explained her plan, even Deborah smirked.  
  
08.08.98; 22:24; Castle Wyvern, Great Hall:  
  
"The hatchlings do not know the truth since we couldn't be sure that they could act so well to fake you." Goliath continued "even so, Elisa will free Chavez of the spell tonight."  
  
Demona tried to regain her self-control, which was not so easy when she realized that there was no way out for her then telling the truth... Something, which made her feel even more uncomfortable.  
  
"So Demona," Deborah started "since you promised to answer all my questions that I would still have about Lucifia after that night... " Deborah's eyes glittered, with a sparkle of red in it ". That time has come now! So you will answer them... Or do you think we are too idiotic to understand them?"  
  
Demona winced a bit by this. "It was a damned hard night," she explained "you went into Lucifia's trap so easily and held me captive damned rough... I can still feel the sword in my intestines" she added with a short look to Othello.  
  
"If I would have given you time," Deborah started "would you have told us the truth?"  
  
Demona shook her head. "No."  
  
"So stop complaining!" Deborah hissed angrily.  
  
Demona and Deborah glared at each other and Goliath found himself forced to interfere before the clan would be witness to a catfight.  
  
"Demona, why this facade?" Goliath asked, "why couldn't you simply tell us the truth? We could have defended ourselves!"  
  
Demona couldn't hide a smirk. "Oh yes Goliath, I saw how capable you were to defend yourselves off against her..." She looked around at the faces of the gathered clan "and the funny thing is, she just played with you!"  
  
There were some growls amongst the clan and a damned angry Deborah snarled.  
  
"Oh yes, we all saw how great you fought against her!" She noticed "tell me how many injuries you have suffered, which would kill someone who is not immortal? Ten or more?"  
  
Demona glared on her old teacher "at least I was able to defeat her!"  
  
"So we are weaklings for you sister?" Desdemona, who sat beside her mate a little further away, asked in a neutral voice. "Like I asked you before and this time, the truth please!"  
  
Demona bit herself on the tongue while she tried to find the right words to speak the truth without embarrassing her former clan too much. This wasn't easy after all.  
  
"I knew that you couldn't achieve anything against her, so warning you was senseless." She answered and looked into her sister's eyes "even I would not have been able to stop her if not for the Angel's swords, so I did what I had to do."  
  
"Since when did you know that she was around here?" Goliath, who did not want to make this any harder than it was already but wanted to know the truth, asked.  
  
"Since the thing with the Stealth Guy" Demona answered calmly. "When you flew away and before, I felt her."  
  
"And why didn't you tell us the truth?" Goliath continued.  
  
"It wasn't any of your business." Demona answered icy.  
  
Angela couldn't believe what she had heard. "Not our business?" She asked disbelieving, "Mother, she was my half-sister!"  
  
"And my problem." Demona answered with a hard glance to her daughter.  
  
"Mother, after that night I thought the worst of you!" Angela said angrily "I thought you used me to kill my father and clan-leader! And you wanted to let me continue to believe in that! Why?"  
  
Demona felt herself become angry. Her daughter seemingly was unable to understand. "Well daughter, what should I have done? Go to you and tell you: 'Hey daughter I wasn't it, it was your older evil sister whom I have imprisoned 300 years ago and now I have to go hunt and kill her!' Now Demona's eyes started to glare red and she stood up "oh and this is what I did the month before the *Large Reawakening.* I was searching for her in order to kill her! Why do you think I wasn't out there hunting those bastards called Quarrymen, the newest example of the great tolerance of humanity?"  
  
Finally she calmed down a bit, sat down again and when she looked to her daughter again, her eyes weren't red anymore, just hard.  
  
"Tell me, what do you like more to see in me?" She asked hard "someone who used you to kill your father or someone who killed her own daughter?"  
  
"Someone who tells me the truth mother." Angela answered sadly and for a moment, it was totally quiet in the hall.  
  
Demona sighed. "I can't serve you with this daughter," Demona answered "I'm sorry."  
  
The silence became large while mother and daughter looked in each other's eyes and finally Deborah made a move.  
  
"Tell me whose trap was this all?" Deborah asked "I mean, when you knew that she was here before you brought us back." She glared at her former pupil "was this all, the comeback of the clan inclusive, a trap for her?"  
  
Goliath looked at his teacher in wonder. This was something he hadn't thought about.  
  
Demona shook her head. "No, I did it this time because the winds of magic, as the winds of space and time, were convenient." She massaged the top of her nose and continued.  
  
"But you knew what she would do." Deborah noted.  
  
Demona capitulated.  
  
"Yes, I thought she would act so even before I brought you back and naturally I wanted to plan this in." Demona answered calmly "so I thought about what to do and decided to play her game to make out this trap for me, a trap for her. Lucifia naturally knew what I would do, but nevertheless she played her game. On this way she thought it would be the more dramatic." She even smiled slightly "she always had a sense for this."  
  
"So you both played with us." Goliath noticed angrily.  
  
Demona shook her head "no Goliath," she replied "Lucifia played with you. I just decided to join in because it was the best way to prevent victims."  
  
"Then you failed sister." Desdemona noticed and on the weird look of her sister she added, "I mean she has killed 48 humans in this shopping mall."  
  
Demona snorted slightly amused.  
  
"I couldn't care less for them." She answered, to Angela and Desdemona's shock.  
  
"What?" Desdemona asked, unbelieving.  
  
Angela, who had more experience with her mother's hate for human, but was although shocked, added.  
  
"Mother she has even killed children!" Angela shook her head "it can't leave you so cold!"  
  
Demona simply shrugged her shoulders by her daughter's reaction.  
  
"Humans kill each other, even their children. Such is neither new nor uncommon." She added and when she saw the more than shocked view in her daughter's eyes and in some of the clan's faces, she added "see at this moment, there is war in a really large, but mostly unknown country called Congo, former Zaire. It is the greatest conflict since the second World War and already 3.5 million humans have slain each other in a massacre that's worse than in the Dark Ages... And believe me, the worst part of this time had yet to come. I don't want to explain the reasons for this war, as they are equal in every century, mainly the human desire for power and their intolerance. There is the massacre on the Tutsi, you don't know of, or the little thing where under the eyes of the so-called civilized world where 800.000 men, women and children were massacred simply because they were the wrong race. In this conflict in Congo, children of our hatchlings age serve as soldiers. They fight under drugs or not and believe me, they are not just cannon fodder, but make massacres for themselves very good. This happens and seemingly the humans are not interested in it. I see no large demonstrations on the streets, hear no large speeches of so called politicians who want to stop this like the Iraq when he attacked Kuwait. I see no so called peace activists demonstrating against this...." Demona sighed, as she had drifted away from her topic.  
  
"What I want to say," she started anew "is that when the humans care so few for the lives of members of their own race, why should I care more?"  
  
There was a long silence and in this moment, the last members of the clan realized how much Demona had changed from the Gargoyle they knew 1000 years ago.  
  
"I am not interested what humans do to each other in any Asian country!" Deborah hissed.  
  
"It is an African country and the whole region is in flame." Demona answered calmly.  
  
"Whatever!" Deborah answered angrily "this is not our business, but you are! And you practically handed over 50 humans to death for your scheming."  
  
Demona glared at her old teacher, but then smiled to the shock of all present persons.  
  
"Yes," she answered somewhat happily "indeed I have."  
  
She looked around in the hall to show that she spoke to the whole clan.  
  
"I accepted the possible death of... No. The absolute sure deaths of humans, but even I didn't know it would be so much. Seemingly Lucifia had worked really hard." She smiled on this, as if it would be a joke, something which let some gargoyles shudder "Well I accepted and accept their deaths to play the game, as Lucifia made the rules for. If I hadn't have done it this way, the clan wouldn't have gone through this so easy like it has. Don't forget that she just played with you, if she would have wanted to kill you, there would have been much more victims."  
  
"I don't accept this Demona." Goliath growled "you should have told us, we would have found a way without these deaths. As clan, we fight instead of letting people get killed for our own safety."  
  
Demona looked deep into her former mate's eyes. "A really good speech Goliath, please tell them to the clan in LA..." she started "oh I forgot, they are all dead! Have you any idea why?"  
  
Goliath growled on this insult, but stopped to say anything more, as he knew it would lead to nothing, but another. A black skinned male gargoyle took the opportunity.  
  
"Demona is right," Kronos said with clear voice and stood up "we are few and the humans many, so we should see after our safety first since the humans seemingly don't do so."  
  
Approving muttering came from great parts of the clan and Goliath wanted to stop this when Demona's voice raised, this time in Krono's direction.  
  
"I am not interested in your opinion Kronos." Demona said in cool voice.  
  
The black gargoyle was a bit confused by Demona's attack.  
  
"I'm on your side sister!" He defended himself.  
  
"So?" She asked, not amused in any way and still looking at the older gargoyle deep in his eyes. "Tell me *brother* when you all thought I had killed these humans and Goliath wanted to hand me over to the police, what would you have pleaded to do with me?"  
  
Kronos eyes grew big.  
  
"Who has told you..." He started and then stopped by Demona's icy look, "I mean I..."  
  
"Nobody has told me that Kronos," Demona said calmly, but with a hidden fire in her voice "but I know you!"  
  
She held her look on him and the wannabe agitator suddenly felt damned uneasy.  
  
"When I need somebody to defend me and I don't need somebody," Demona explained "then it will surely not be you. Sit down."  
  
This last sentence was clearly an instruction, which was strange since Demona neither had any rank in the clan or even a clan member, but somehow this was forgotten at this moment.  
  
"I really... " Kronos stumbled "you cannot..."  
  
*Give me orders* would have been the next words, but Demona interrupted him, seemingly not caring for what he wanted to say. Desdemona and Angela saw how Demona's claws crawled deeply into the wooden desk and Angela thought she could even hear it splinter.  
  
"I... said... sit... down!" She nearly spit these words and every one of them was as sharp as swords, but together they were deadly.  
  
Kronos sat down with his last dignity and nearly collapsed in it.  
  
Demona still looked on him for a few seconds with her hard look, which seemingly melt Kronos down even more, then she turned to Goliath.  
  
"What were you going to say Goliath?" Demona asked calmly, ignoring the surprised views around her.  
  
Goliath swallowed, as he had to control himself to not answer *nothing second, * since she was it no longer. But for those seconds she had been it again, his second in command, defending him and holding the clan together with the balled fist if necessary.  
  
While Goliath regained from this little shock, Angela took the initiative.  
  
"Mother you made your point." She noted and looked deep into her mother's eyes "I could tell you that it was wrong that you let these humans be killed, but it wasn't in your power to prevent it and this is not the reason why I wanted you to be here." Angela sighed, "who was Lucifia?"  
  
Demona shrugged her shoulders "My daughter, an unbelievable evil immortal. I imprisoned her for all time or so I thought. She apparently freed herself some years before and now threatened you and every other being on this planet, gargoyles, humans, even Fay so that I had to kill her finally."  
  
Angela shook her head. "This is what she has done," again she looked deep in her mother's eyes, this time nearly pleading "but not who she was... She had to be someone else even when it was long ago?"  
  
Demona's eyes suddenly seemed to be far away and when she spoke, she spoke like of a dream. "Yes she was." This moment was perhaps two seconds long and Angela thought she could see the glitter of tears in her mother's eyes, but it was just the piece of a moment then her mother seemingly had regained self-control.  
  
Demona looked deep in her daughter's eyes "I have to tell the whole story?"  
  
Angela nodded "yes mother, please."  
  
Demona sighed and sat down. "Well then, listen well because it is a long story and I have no intention to repeat it."  
  
Angela and some others nodded and Demona leaned back, her eyes closed.  
  
"It was in the year 1622 that I came with a ship from Spain to the so called New World." Demona said and while she spoke, she seemed to sink more and more into her memories "I was on the search for other gargoyles since I knew that America was mainly unsullied of human civilisation and I searched one year until I discovered one." Demona smiled slightly "or better yet, he discovered me... It was the 2nd of February 1623."  
  
The clan looked at each other. This had been the code for Demona's safety! It must really have been special.  
  
02.02.1623; 23:14; A cave about a small town, near the later Greensborough:  
  
Demona sat in the cave and bit her tongue in order not to scream in pain, trying to grab the bullet, which had penetrated deep into the soft flesh of her stomach. She felt the blood in her mouth and the pain was nearly unbearable, but she had to pin the bullet out.  
  
Sure, she knew unfortunately all to well that the bullet would be pulled out by the healing power sooner or later, but she had made even so the experience that when the bullet was out, the wound closed much faster. Demona did not want to be wounded too long, this made her immobile and she did not know if the farmers had followed her to her hiding place.  
  
She looked down to her loot, which were a small bag of apples and some eggs. Perhaps it was enough to give her the energy back that she had lost through her action tonight, but never to support her for more then two nights.  
  
~Why did these cursed humans have to be so damned clever? ~ She asked herself while thinking about what had happened. She had, like the nights before since she had decided to rest in this area a bit, tried to steal something eatable from the farmers in the small town in the valley below, but this time the humans had been prepared.  
  
Earlier this night  
  
When she came out from the barn, away from the larger farm house, that she had just plundered, a man tried to catch her from above with the help of a net, but luckily she had heard him on the roof since humans were luckily damned clumsy. She had despite the weight of her full bags moved forward very fast and so could escape the falling net, but just to discover that she was surrounded by armed men.  
  
Demona had roared her most terrific roar, which made the humans move a step back. One of these humans held a bible and a cross in front of him and murmured something like "to hell with you, child of Lucifer!" And wouldn't the situation have been so bad, Demona would have laughed, ~humans never change! ~  
  
Unfortunately, another man was more practical and shot her with his gun in her stomach so that Demona had to gather all her power not to collapse out of pain. Demona looked at the mass of humans where the sniper was reloading his gun and noticed that many forks, swords and spears were holding her back from killing this human.  
  
She was going to snarl in frustration when the humans on the roof behind her had an idea for which he seemingly had used more of his heart than his brain. He jumped on her back in order to bring her down and for one moment Demona stumbled really hard, which led to her loosing many of her robbed food, but she caught herself and used this unwanted opportunity to her advantage.  
  
She grabbed this blasted human by his throat and threw him into the circle of men who were surely his friends. When he landed on top of them either a sword or a fork stabbed him, but she did not care for this. But she did care that there was now a hole in the line of her attackers and she was going to use it.  
  
With a scream, which echoed on the valley, she rammed forward on all fours through the hole in the living circle, above the humans who lay on their backs, and ran straight into the night.  
  
Demona was fast on her fours, not as fast as the air, but surely faster than these pathetic humans, even despite her wound and soon she did not even hear the shouts of those humans any more.  
  
Back in the cave  
  
Demona sighed. If the situation would stay the same then she would starve. If only she wasn't immortal. The farmers would now guard their supplies better than before and they had already expelled the most game in this area so that she couldn't go hunting.  
  
~Time to leave~ Demona thought, but this did not make her sad since the cave wasn't a home, just a hiding place.  
  
While she painfully grabbed her flesh, she heard a noise somewhere out of the cave and was on full alarm again. It might be an animal, but Demona did not want to risk anything, so she grabbed the spear beside of her and kneeled, despite the pain, down so as not to be discovered so easily by any intruder.  
  
There were long seconds of silence and Demona was beginning to believe that it was really an animal, but there was a second noise outside the cave, nearer this time. Demona cursed herself for not having been more cautious. The humans would have been able to follow her track anyhow and now she was trapped in a cave where she couldn't use the advantage of her wings! But Demona swore to herself that she would either not let herself be defeated by those pathetic humans or she would kill as many of them of these bastards as possible before she *died. *  
  
She heard how the noises of footsteps came nearer and brought all muscles in her body into war mode.  
  
Suddenly, a large figure stepped out of the darkness and Demona was going to throw her spear at him when she noticed something... It was a gargoyle!  
  
He slowly entered the cave and now Demona could see him better. The male gargoyle had an impressive body, even though he was not as large as Goliath had been, he still had enough muscles... and he looked different.  
  
His body had some resemblance with a hawk. A large yellow beak set in the face, dominated by intelligent brown eyes. He had some sort of black and brown feathers, which even so made the greatest parts of his wings and wore a loincloth, unlike the gargoyles from London that Demona had met so long ago.  
  
He even wore a ribbon with three long feathers, sure from one of the hawks Demona had seen in this area, on his right upper arm and a necklace with a hawk head out of wood, with eyes seemingly out of a red diamond, sparkling in the dark.  
  
"Who are you?" Demona asked conspicuously. It was weird that a gargoyle had discovered her here and if it was one thing that the experiences in the last six centuries had taught her then it was to be cautious.  
  
"I'm a friend." The strange gargoyle said.  
  
"What is your name?" Demona asked.  
  
"My clan calls me Shaman. Sometimes even Hawk, but this is merely my nickname."  
  
"Shaman..." Demona murmured and felt how beads of perspiration ran down her cheek and her wound was bleeding again. "The human's gave me the name Demona and I... "  
  
"Need help?" The strange gargoyle noticed and came nearer to her, studying the wound on her stomach. "Sit down please."  
  
Normally, Demona would not have let herself be commanded even by one of her own race. But this time, she didn't have the power to argue since she already relied on the spear not to sink down. Somehow she had managed to open the wounds even further, so she followed the orders.  
  
When she sat down, the male sat beside her and studied her wound even more. She saw for the first time that he was about her age... When she went by biology anyway.  
  
The gargoyle... She was going to have to call him Shaman, took the bag on which hung on his belt and opened it.  
  
"Your wound is deep..." Shaman noticed "you have tried to pull out the bullet?"  
  
Demona nodded. "Yes," she answered slightly, "I wanted to... " She was going to say that she had tried to fasten her healing, but then she bit herself on the tongue. She did not want to tell him about her immortality yet. She had had bad experiences with other clans when she had told them about this. "I did not want the bullet to stay in the flesh when I change to stone."  
  
Shaman nodded even when he did not really look like he had hearing it after all, but opened the bag.  
  
"I will put some healing leaves in the wound," he explained "it will ease the pain."  
  
"You're a healer?" Demona asked in wonder, while she let him put the leaves on her wound and felt that the pain became smaller at once.  
  
"I'm a Shaman," he explained "this makes me the healer and leader of my clan."  
  
Demona nodded, she had heard of Shamans, even though she had never met one. Back in the old times, before Scotland became Christian, Shamans had led the human tribes who wandered in no large groups through the rough country.  
  
The elders of her clan had told her stories about these Shamans when she and her siblings were hatchlings, but definitely no good ones. They said shamans could call the souls of the dead to enslave them and would have contact with evil, unearthly powers that desired only to rule and destroy.  
  
Back then she had believed her elders. But then she had started to become interested in magic and when she was finally learning it, from the Archmage, she started to wonder how the shamanism had really been? Unfortunately, there were no more Shamans in Scotland, as all had been killed by good Christians who wanted to serve their God by destroying the pagans who dared to worship another way then the one of the church.  
  
~funny that they use Jesus to justify their wars and massacres~ Demona thought ~a man who preached tolerance and non-violence~  
  
But she had stopped since a long time to wonder about such, the humans would ever find a reason for wars and bloodsheds.  
  
The hawk-like gargoyle frowned. "You are right, the bullet has to be pulled out or it might bring constant pain." He looked deep into her green sparkling eyes and she saw herself mirrored in his. "I'll do it, but it will hurt."  
  
Demona nodded, "I've been through harder things."  
  
Again he looked deep into her eyes and she almost believed he could even so see into her soul. Then he turned to the wound and calmly grabbed it.  
  
Demona clenched her fangs even if it wasn't as painful as she supposed it should be and after some seconds, he held with a happy smile the bullet in his bloody claw.  
  
"That's it my lady!" He said, gave her the bullet and pressed the leaves again on her wound.  
  
Demona studied the bullet in her hand and snorted, humans had ever been very inventive when it was to build new weapons, whether it was this or the flying machine that a hunter had used 125 years ago in Florence. She started to believe and to hope that one day; the humans would create a weapon through which they would rid themselves from the earth.  
  
But this wasn't it and so she threw the bullet away and looked to Shaman.  
  
"Thank you, you have saved me." Demona declared with a short smile.  
  
Shaman shook his head. "No, I just pulled the bullet out" he explained "indeed your wound closes very fast, practically before my eyes."  
  
"In my clan in Scotland, it was usual that wounds close so fast." Demona said. This was a lie, but she did not know how much she could reveal from herself to him. She knew that some gargoyles were very much like humans and Fay in things of magic and even though he looked intelligent and good- hearted, she did not want to risk to loosing him.  
  
"Ah..." Shaman said, but Demona could see in his eyes that he did not believe her.  
  
~You have lied better already~ she said herself silently and added out- loud, to divert him from this.  
  
"You said you have a clan?" Demona asked "but I have been out here for some time and have not seen one?"  
  
Shaman nodded and sat himself beside her, still pushing the leaves into her wound.  
  
"No you haven't," he told her "my clan lives five nights flight away from here, deep in the mountain area that the English call Appalachian."  
  
Demona looked on him in shock. She must have misheard "FIVE NIGHTS FLYING?!" She asked in wonder and shock, but he just nodded. "What lead you so far away from your clan?!"  
  
Shaman looked deep into her eyes. "You" he answered with a smile.  
  
"You knew that I was here?" She asked, even more confused and a bit suspicious, "how?!"  
  
Again, Shaman smiled a bit and threw a look on the wound, which had nearly closed.  
  
~Amazing.~  
  
"The spirits told me where I could find you." He said and leaned back on the wand of the cave. "They said here would be someone who needs my help, so I came."  
  
"Spirits?" Demona noticed in wonder. ~So the books told the truth~ she thought.  
  
Shaman nodded. "Yes, they help guide me to lead my clan and to protect them." He explained "we taught this even to the humans who had lived past in this area... The English call them Indians, but indeed they named themselves as *Pocu marcate,* which means Children of Moon."  
  
He sighed sadly "but that is another story."  
  
Demona nodded and then they just sat there beside each other in silence.  
  
"You did not ask me about my clan." Demona noticed.  
  
Shaman sighed, "it is always the same story Demona," he answered "since we are not made to be alone, you had to have been forced to come here alone. This means that, either you came here to explore this country to see if it is safer than your old one for your clan. Or your clan had been destroyed and you try to find out if in this country, which is referred to by the English as the *New World* or *America,* there are still gargoyle clans where you can live with. Since you spoke of your clan in the past tense, I fear it is the second one."  
  
Demona looked on him in wonder by his sharp mind.  
  
"You forgot the possibility that I may have been banished." She noted dryly.  
  
Shaman bent his head in order to study her.  
  
"No," he answered finally "someone so beautiful wouldn't be banished from a clan. It doesn't matter what she did."  
  
Demona smiled weakly by this compliment. It did good to be treated in such a way again, but she still had so many questions.  
  
"The way you talk let me thinks that you have met other gargoyles from the European world already." Demona said.  
  
Shaman nodded. "Yes, my clan has met many other gargoyles. Once even a whole clan who came from your so called *Old World* in order to find a new home." He explained "some were Spanish, German, English, French, Italian... Me thinks every gargoyle of the Old World is desiring for a new home."  
  
Demona nodded. A part of her was happy that at least a few of the European clans would exist further, but another part, the one where her warrior instincts came from, was frustrated since she knew that it was just a temporary solution. When she came here, she had seen how the thousands of humans had come every day! Demona knew that sooner or later, the human civilization would go west until they reached the next ocean where Demona knew was on the other side of the continent. How the settlers had expelled or wiped out the native population did not leave Demona any illusions that these humans were any other than the ones in Europe.  
  
"I do not desire to keep you away from your clan any longer" Demona explained and raised "and it is a long journey that we have to do, so let us start."  
  
Shaman looked on her in wonder "But your wound... "  
  
Demona took the leaves from it and showed him the wound, which was now nothing more than a little scratch.  
  
"I don't let myself get stopped by a mere scratch" she noted "besides, the humans in this area, even when they have no experience with our kind, might search me during the day, so it is better if we leave fast."  
  
Shaman, who was still a bit shocked by the female's healing capability, nodded and when they had gathered the few things that they needed for the trip, they started.  
  
08.02.1623; 21:23; A plain, high on a rocky mountain:  
  
They did not speak much on their five-day journey, but this wasn't necessary since they simply flew most of the time. After seeing Shaman hunting, Demona asked herself how someone could be so bad at it and yet could survive a five-day trip.  
  
So she asked him and he answered that he disliked to kill all manner of creatures, animals, gargoyles and humans alike because when he killed them, they often came to him in the space between the worlds of the living and the dead and he felt uneasy by this.  
  
This made Demona wonder. Shaman explained that hunting was a nearly holy action in his clan so he, before the clan sent a hunter to kill the animals, asked the spirits of this animal to give them their flesh so that his clan could live, which they did most of the time.  
  
Demona had seen other strange rituals in other clans, but this was the strangest she had ever heard of. In her clan, prey had been... prey, and nobody had thought about making a holy ritual out of hunting and killing it.  
  
~If he thinks that hunting is a holy ritual and the prey is holy too~ Demona thought ~what will he think of me when... If I tell him that I was prey for 600 years and still be? ~  
  
Finally, they neared a plain on a high mountain and Demona looked around. As they came nearer, she saw some figures wandering over the plain that quickly doubled in number and when they finally landed it seemed that the whole clan had gathered.  
  
When she landed beside Shaman, Demona had a very good overview of the clan. There were old ones and hatchlings of the last rookery that, to Demona's confusion, were nearly as many as the elders, while the middle generations were very few, about 30 or more. Some had hawk features, some were similar to bears and others to coyotes or wolves. They were in some way like the gargoyles of the London clan and Demona thought that maybe there was a connection... But that wasn't relevant now.  
  
Even though she had seen greater clans, it gave Demona hope to see a clan of her kind.  
  
~Don't be no fool~ she said to herself ~there were greater and more powerful clans all over the world and they are mostly all dead now. ~  
  
Aside from her, Shaman who was at once greeted by the clan especially by the hatchlings, started to speak.  
  
To Demona's wonder, he spoke in a language that she had heard once by some Indians and even though she could not understand what he said, she heard her name at one time.  
  
There were a lot of nods and some of the clan's elders came to her. "Pagatio loku," they greeted or so Demona thought and just nodded.  
  
"I am the only one of my clan who can speak your language." Shaman explained "the others are not interested to learn this new language of the whites... They even so don't need it. I have told them that you came here from Scotland and so we will celebrate this with a large meal."  
  
Demona shook her head. "You need not," she replied "I'm really thankful for this offer, but it is still winter and I can imagine that the supplies of your clan are low. I don't want you to waste food for me."  
  
Shaman laughed a bit. "Demona, it is not all well in these times, but we sure don't starve" he explained "we have enough food from the summer and there is still game in the forest. There's a river float not far from here so that we can get, for the whole winter, fresh fish because it never becomes ice and we have even other help... " He hesitated, seemingly thinking about it "or not, but I'll explain later."  
  
Demona wanted to say something, but Shaman raised a hand and stopped her "please Demona, it is an invention and I ask you as clan leader to accept this. My clan greets every gargoyle from the Old World so!"  
  
Demona hesitated, but nodded after a look in Shaman's brown eyes. It had been a long time since she had eaten with other gargoyles.  
  
08.02.1623; 22:34; the clan's feast:  
  
The meal was great and Demona had not seen so much food for some years. So she ate thankfully, even if she couldn't understand what the clan was talking about.  
  
"I know it is hard for you to understand what they speak about my lady." Shaman said when he noticed the neutral expression on his guest's face. "I can teach you our language... If you want to stay at least a while."  
  
Demona looked in his eyes and saw a bit of pain and uncertainty. She was going to answer him that she already knew a lot of languages, perhaps even more than any other gargoyle before, but surely more than most humans. She would like to stay for a bit, when suddenly a gargoyle with the appearance of a bear came out of the shadows from behind them and laid a claw on Shaman's shoulder.  
  
Demona did not understand what he said, but she saw Shaman's face darken and that certainly couldn't be good. When Shaman nodded and spoke something to the gargoyle, she saw how the strange gargoyle looked curiously on her, but nodded even so and retired.  
  
"Demona, I have to plead you for a favor." Shaman asked.  
  
Demona nodded. "Naturally," she said and while she said this, they rose from the table and went to the edge of the plain "what has happened?"  
  
"I don't know it exactly," Shaman admitted "but me thinks someone is ill and needs my help." He gave her a strange look ". and I need you."  
  
"Naturally I will help," Demona explained "but I have no idea how I could help you. I'm no healer."  
  
Shaman smiled "you will see."  
  
They came to the edge of the plain, on the other side where Demona had landed shortly before and Demona looked down. What she saw made her shudder.  
  
Down in the valley her sharp eyes saw human houses... It couldn't really be called a town, but there definitely lived humans. Even when they were miles away and perhaps 100 meters down the plain, it was much too near for her taste... much too near and she snarled nearly unconsciously.  
  
"Please fair lady," Shaman said and laid a hand on her shoulder. "I know how you feel. Even though I, to my luck, have never felt the loss of my clan, but I need you there."  
  
She looked on him, curious, nearly suspiciously and noticed the tired expression in his face.  
  
"The person you want to help is a human?" She asked, nearly annoyed by the thought that a healer of her kind should help a human.  
  
"Yes I assume so, or it maybe just an animal, which needs help." He explained "but they want me to help." He noticed the still angry expression on her face. "The deal is that I help them and they give me and my clan some of their provisions. Either at once as payment or later when we need some... They even lend us tools and knowledge to build useful things."  
  
While he spoke, his brother came and gave him a bag out of which came some strange smell, which Demona couldn't identify. After he did so, he went off again into the darkness.  
  
"I plead for you to come with me," he said again "I need somebody to help me and you are the one I want... for my clan."  
  
Demona looked into his pleading brown eyes and sighed. She did not want to let him go to these humans, but she knew he would do so on every case so this was senseless. And if it was a trap of the humans then who would help him when she wouldn't?  
  
She nodded slightly. "I'll follow you" she answered and Shaman's face lit up.  
  
"Then come!" With a jump he started from the plain and was, before her, in the sky. "We have to hurry."  
  
Demona sighed and threw herself with a jump into the sky and followed him.  
  
~Why do I let myself always get persuaded by such good-hearted fools? ~ She asked and realized ~I'm the greatest of all fools for following them! ~  
  
"We have arranged it so that they make a large fire on the high rock in the middle of their settlement every time that they need help." He explained "you won't believe how often I have to come to help them!"  
  
Demona nodded slightly while flying with him through the sky. "Humans are so fragile!" She said, but Shaman seemingly did not notice this since his attention was centered on the couple of humans in the middle of the little town who apparently were waiting for him.  
  
While she landed beside him, Shaman went to those humans. She studied them like they did to her. Demona knew the expressions on their faces, as it was the same expression of controlled disgust and hate. She knew this expression from her time at Moray from humans who tolerated her race because they had to, not because they wanted to, and who wanted in the best case no contact with the demons. But Shaman was already ready for them and beckoned Demona to follow him.  
  
"Hake Moke Lake!" Shaman said to her, as she went beside him and at first she was stunned. Why had he spoke to her in his language even when he knew that she could not understand him? But then, with a look in his deep brown eyes she understood.  
  
"Loke Maga Ne Kola!" She answered and Shaman nodded. While she had to control herself not to smile evilly and making the humans suspicious.  
  
What she had said was absolute nonsense, but at least it sounded like the language that Shaman's clan spoke and the humans did not know them either, so they thought this new gargoyle was just able to speak this language without understanding them.  
  
~This is the reason I should go with him! ~ Demona thought, surprised with Shaman's cleverness of a sort that Goliath had absolutely lacked of ~or at least one. ~  
  
Finally, they came to a door where a worried looking man stood, seeing Shaman with somewhat like relief and her with surprise.  
  
"Come fast!" The man said, "me thinks she won't survive this night!"  
  
Shaman nodded and they both went in. Demona went with them and followed them until they came to a room, which was seemingly the children's room of the small house.... And one of them was seemingly very ill, having fever and coughing. In the bed, beside a woman whom Demona guessed had to be the mother, laid a girl about 12 years old and dying, which Demona could see even without being a healer.  
  
The mother was shocked when she saw the gargoyle entered and held her child even tighter to her breast, as if she could protect her from these monsters... or death.  
  
"Wife! Go outside!" The husband ordered "we have given God enough possibilities, now let us give this... Shaman, a chance."  
  
The wife looked at him angrily. "No!" She said and held a bible high between her and the gargoyles. "These are creatures from the devil himself!" She said fearfully "it is better that Maria dies and goes to god then let these monsters take her soul."  
  
Demona had to control herself not to snarl.  
  
~This human really is crazy! ~ She thought ~seeing her breed dying and instead of accepting help, she pleads for their God! ~  
  
The man seemed near to loose control himself.  
  
"Shaman had helped Markus's son as well last month," the human noted "and does he look soulless? So leave her and in God's name let them help."  
  
But the woman did not seem accessible and instead tightened her embrace around her daughter even more. Demona threw a look at the girl's pale blue and painful eyes and shuddered. This child would die soon if Shaman didn't help, indeed Demona doubted that they could do anything for her even now... Not that she cared for this human brat.  
  
But the child's father obviously did and combined with his anger about his wife's refusal, he became damned angry. He went to his wife and beat her in the face so that she fell from the bed on the ground, then he took her up and screamed "YOU WILL OBEY ME WIFE!"  
  
With this he threw the sobbing woman to the door where she fell down again.  
  
"GO," he ordered angrily "go in the kitchen and wait there!"  
  
Demona nearly believed the woman would refuse and they would be witness to how the human would beat his wife even more, but the woman seemingly did have enough brains or experience to know that she couldn't refuse this order so she went sobbing into the kitchen.  
  
Demona and Shaman exchanged views. It was clear that he did not agree with what the human did with his wife, but he cared too less for her to do something and Demona saw it even so.  
  
She had always wondered how human females let this happen to them. For gargoyle males and females were equal and this had been ever so since the beginning of their race. They were both capable of having the same position in the clan and a female clan leader or second like she had been once was nothing unusual. The thought that this would be any different was funny.  
  
~And then how the human females let themselves get treated by their mates! ~ Demona thought slightly amused ~if ever one of our males would dare this with me, he would plead for death! ~  
  
This led Demona back to Goliath. He had always treated her well. He had been soft despite his enormous strength and the nights they had spent away from the clan... But this was past, he was stone already for more than 600 years and she was here, so she concentrated again on the present.  
  
She saw how Shaman went aside of the girl and looked on her.  
  
"Can you help her?" The man asked, worried. "Please, she is my only child."  
  
"You should have called me earlier this night." Shaman explained without looking on him. "But yes I can. Please leave the room so that I can start."  
  
The man nodded, as he seemingly knew what was to be done and went into the kitchen, maybe to calm down his wife or beat her further. It didn't interest Demona.  
  
"Shhh," Shaman said softly to the girl and placed a dried leaf in her mouth "this will ease your pains." He checked her cautiously and spoke to Demona silently, seemingly in fear that the humans would eavesdrop. "She has high fever, maybe the influenza or worse." Shaman sighed and looked to his companion while taking things out of his bag, "I'll make a little ritual to heal her. When it is over, bring me home."  
  
Demona looked on him in wonder. "But... "  
  
Shaman raised a claw to his beak as a sign to be quiet. "Please," he asked silently "you can ask me all your questions when we are back on the plain."  
  
Demona looked into his eyes, this did not please her and she had the feeling that what would come would not please her either, but she nodded. She had to trust him.  
  
While she leaned against the wall she saw how Shaman took some strange stones from his bag and placed them around him and the girl. Then he took a club of some kind, laid it between himself and the child and put some loaves on it. Finally he spoke some words in his language and the stones started to glow until they made a circle of light around him and the girl while the loaves on the club started to burn and a light fog laid itself around them.  
  
Demona starred at this in wonder. She did not feel any magic, which meant that this was a total other form of magic, which she couldn't sense or that another form of energy was involved.  
  
Shaman spoke again some strange words and suddenly Demona heard a scream like that of an eagle. Indeed, at that moment, a hawk came from the window into the room. But it wasn't a real animal but Demona noticed in the greatest of confusion, a ghost that quickly circled around Shaman and the girl while Shaman murmured words in his strange language and made a barrier around them.  
  
Suddenly, the spirit went into the body of the girl and it seemed to shine through her eyes an unearthly white light. Then the spirit came out of the girl's chest with a band made out of white light as its tail and flew directly into Shaman's chest causing his eyes to glow even so white.  
  
Demona noticed in wonder how two shimmers of light had appeared around the bodies in the circle and she knew that it was their auras. The girl's aura was weak, as it did not shine brightly, but Shaman's aura really brightened the room, which showed that he was very powerful and in the blossom of his age. But when the band between them was ready, something happened and his aura started to become weaker while the girl's became brighter and in this moment, Demona understood what Shaman was doing.  
  
~Damn! ~ She cursed and a part of her wanted to storm to Shaman and stop the ritual, but she did not know what the effect would be and so she had to helplessly watch Shaman's aura become weaker and the girl's become brighter every second.  
  
Finally, it seemed enough even for Shaman and with an order in his language, he cut the band. The spirit of the eagle flew out of Shaman's chest and again out of the window into the night or the place that it had come from. But this did not interest Demona since she ran at once to Shaman and embraced him so that he did not collapse.  
  
"Are you mad?" She asked him angrily, feeling the cold of his body and his weak muscles; unhappy to discover another reason why she had to come with him. "Why didn't you tell me what would happen?"  
  
He tried to smile, but this went over in a cough. "I saw in your eyes that you would never have let me do this if I would have told you" he explained "or would you?"  
  
Demona growled something about idiotic good-hearted fools and in this moment, the girl woke up.  
  
At first, she was confused and didn't know what to do, but when she saw the strange creatures near her bed, she started to scream.  
  
"MUMMY DADDY THE DEMONS ARE HERE, THE DEMONS!!!" The way she screamed convinced Demona that this girl was definitely on the way to becoming fully healed and wouldn't need further help... But only if Demona wouldn't kill her in the next few seconds.  
  
But her screams weren't unheard and so the parents ran from the kitchen to see what had happened. The mother at once stormed to her child and embraced her tightly without even looking on the gargoyles that had saved her child some minutes ago.  
  
The father looked on his daughter and nodded. He then looked to the weak Shaman and the other gargoyle at his side.  
  
"Thank you that you have saved her," he explained and to Demona's wonder, she really heard a piece of gratitude "I will give you what you need when you ask for it."  
  
Shaman nodded while the man went to his daughter and wife to embrace them.  
  
Then Shaman looked to Demona. "Sali Kaol Makate" he said and silently pointed to his bag and the stones, which still lay around the room.  
  
Demona nodded and started to take the materials carefully into the bag while looking on Shaman. He had leaned with his back against a wall, sitting on the ground and breathing heavily.  
  
She looked on the bed and took the last object, the club. While she did so, she came with her claw nearly unconsciously near to the girl who saw this at once and started to crawl deeper into the arms of her mother. Her mother took the fact that the gargoyle had come too near to her daughter, neither very well and held the bible directly in front of Demona's face.  
  
"Might the power of God banish you to the depths of hell whence you come from!" The woman nearly ordered.  
  
Demona starred at her and didn't know if she should be angry or amused. This woman who didn't even have any power over her man believed to have power over her just because of this book? It wasn't even magic, just some letters printed on paper and no interesting ones as far Demona could say since she had read it once on the request of Goliath in order to make her understand the humans better.  
  
But she was freed of the decision whether she should tear this ungrateful human into pieces or simply laugh at her because of this madness, since the man pulled his wife strongly back with his arms.  
  
"You should better go now." The man said, now without something like thankfulness in his voice.  
  
Instead of killing him for this order, Demona took the club and then helped Shaman up so that they could leave the house while she wore the bag on her back.  
  
"Thank you," Shaman said, "I know this was hard for you."  
  
As an answer, Demona growled slightly. "Can you glide?" She asked and he shook his head.  
  
Demona looked around. There was a little cliff from where she could try to leap into the air.  
  
"Then I'll have to carry you," she explained without joy "come."  
  
He did what she had said and soon they were up in the air, he in her arms on the way to the plain of the clan.  
  
09.02.1623; 00:23; the clan's plain:  
  
"Loku Mata Poraka!" The gargoyle with the appearance of a bear said angrily to Shaman who lay on a bed in his cave "Fola Meka Luti!"  
  
"Mone Hoki Balo!" Shaman answered and responded his view.  
  
It was a quiet moment in the cave after that, then the gargoyle growled something and went out leaving Shaman and Demona, who had been there for quite some time, behind them.  
  
"I can't understand the language of your clan but I have to agree him." Demona said calmly, leaning on the wall on the opposite side of Shaman's bed and studying the exhausted gargoyle.  
  
Shaman smiled slightly. "You are right," he admitted, "some things need no understanding of the language to understand them." His smile fated "my brother could never understand how necessarily it is what I do.... But I hope you will."  
  
"And what do you do?" Demona asked angrily "you give the humans a part of your living energy in the hope that they will not destroy you while you sleep!"  
  
Shaman slightly shook his head. "What you said is wrong," he explained calmly "at least the largest part of it. The humans can't harm us, we are safe here."  
  
"Ha!" Demona snorted "don't believe this, already in my.... Back in Scotland, the humans have started to make machines and tools, which could overcome the cliffs in which we have made our home for so long." She explained "I don't think that even this high plain might be able to stop them if they really would want to come here."  
  
Shaman shook his head with a little laugh "My lady, it isn't the high plain, which protects us, even when the plain makes a part in the protection. It is... " Shaman stopped and sighed. Then he sat up on his bed and motioned Demona to sit herself beside him.  
  
She did so and he took a long breath. "Well, I think it's for the best that I tell you the whole story!"  
  
With his claw, he first started to rub his tired eyes and then his beak. "My clan and the tribe of humans who lived here before the whites came, were more than allies. We were practically one. The members, especially the leaders of both our clan's were often the best of friends and we shared knowledge, food and wisdom together, a longer time than the tales of my clan exist. The members of my clan were all hunters and could track down game even in the deepest winter while the humans gave us some grain that they had cultivated in the summer. When they hadn't enough, they offered little trucks of them to us in-exchange for protecting them as they traveled to the great plain in the west where the grain was ever large enough so that we could buy such in exchange for furs or rare stones. It was a long period of peace and our both clans celebrated many celebrations together, as long as I can think we had peace."  
  
He sighed and leaned with his back against the wall.  
  
"Then the whites arrived and everything became worse. It was first a few pioneers who explored this area, but already these brought death and pain. With them diseases came, diseases we never had seen before and they spread faster than the flames in the great plains, under the humans we called our friends. With the help of the leader before me, we could heal a lot of them and just some elders and children died... It is few compared with the stories we heard afterwards from whole cities who had been devastated by the whites' diseases in the great plain and other areas."  
  
Demona nodded. She had witnessed the plagues that had killed nearly whole Europe centuries before and she had even so seen how sensitive the humans in this new world seemed against the diseases of the old world and died by this even more then through the whites' weapons.  
  
"But this seemed to be a warning," Shaman explained "shortly after this, the first settlers arrived here and said that this land where both our clans lived since centuries. They said that their government had given it to them and that we should go... Naturally we refused, so they sent their soldiers, but with the combined forces of both our clans we could drive the invaders back every time. Unfortunately, because of our stone sleep the whites discovered and decided to use this to their advantage very quickly and started just to attack during the day, which led to many victims under our allies. In the end, the leaders who were, how I said, even so shamans of both of our clans, decided to plead for the help of the great spirit, the first spirit who was the start and is the end, to protect our clans. It was the largest invocation I was ever witness of and surely ever will be."  
  
Shaman looked on his guest with a pale smile and continued. "They both died by this, but they had success. at least a bit. The whole plain is protected by a guardian spirit, no one can harm us here."  
  
Demona's eyes widened. If she could copy such a spell and offer this to the other clans she knew....  
  
"Why just a bit success?" Demona asked "this is fantastic! When the humans can't harm us we... "  
  
"No you don't understand," Shaman said "they can't harm us here on the plain in the valley they can and the spirit just protects us here, not the human clan we were allied with down in the valley."  
  
Demona looked on him in wonder when she understood. "The humans couldn't protect their homes and so they abandoned you." She noticed, but anew Shaman shook his head.  
  
"Wrong again my lady." He responded "they haven't abandoned us, as we still hold a council of both our whole clans... It was clear that the whites wouldn't tolerate our allies in the valley and they couldn't live on this plain since their fields were in the valley. So they decided to dare the journey to the west, about the great river that the English named Mississippi and seeking another home where they could live in peace. A female of the generation of our former leader thought even so and argued that we should follow them in order to find a more peaceful place to life, besides of that it would be impossible to supply our clan here without the help of our allies. I argued that this land is our land as long as the memories of my clan reach and that besides of this, the whites would soon be everywhere so fleeing would be senseless and we had to arrange us with them, making the same deal we had with the other humans that they gave us food in exchange for our help."  
  
He sighed and Demona could see deep pain in his large brown eyes. "My clan was divided and since I was just clan leader for some days and a damned young one too, I hadn't enough respect in the clan to convince them all of my position. In the end we decided to split the clan."  
  
The last words came through his throat hard, with more pain than Demona had heard of him before and she could understand him all too well. It was usual, at least in Scotland, that when a clan became too large for the area to support them, they would split in two parts. One would stand and one would start searching for another place to life in. But it was more than tragic when a clan split through a quarrel or simply when they divided when a part of it could no longer agree with the leader. Usually the leader would rather change his or her mind instead of the splitting the clan, but it happened.  
  
Back in Scotland, the elders had told her once as a hatchling about such things in other clans but she hadn't believed that this would be possible, that a gargoyle clan would split up just because of a disagreement. Years later, it had nearly happened when some of the clan refused to help the humans of Wyvern against the Vikings after the death of the clan's second. At this time, she had been a friend of such an alliance and helped the old clan leader to hold the alliance... A mistake that she now knew.  
  
"Surely you have noticed that the clan is mainly made out of elders and hatchlings?" Shaman asked slightly, noticing the depths of thoughts she had seemingly dived into and when she nodded, he continued. "The elders mostly stayed because they were too old to make the long trip while the youngest are the eggs, which had at this time just been laid... That was another reason why I argued for staying here. The middle of my clan hasn't stayed much and I suppose if the whole clan would have been mobile, I would be alone here now."  
  
He laughed a bit and Demona knew it was pure sarcasm.  
  
"Not that I blame them!" Shaman tried to explain, "my sister made a very good argument, as she had had an education as a shaman. Even so, she was never supposed to be second or leader and although I don't doubt that she could lead her followers to a better area, but..." Shaman looked deep into Demona's green eyes and thought about how wonderful they sparkled in the light of the torches. "Demona, do you understand why I and the few who followed me stayed here?"  
  
Demona swallowed. She understood, even when she did not want to understand. "Well naturally, because we protect and most of all we protect our clan and the place where we live. And this place is damned good for it. I mean a place where we are protected through a guardian spirit during the day is something all clans of our race dream of."  
  
Shaman nodded. "Yes, these all are reasons why I would stay here and perhaps they would even be enough, but there is another large reason why I chose to stay and you know it."  
  
Demona sighed. "You want to achieve a peaceful coexistence of humans and gargoyles." She explained, "but believe me the humans are not to be trusted! Maybe the humans who lived here former were the exception, but these humans would love to slaughter your clan like they did it in Europe!!!"  
  
Her eyes had started to glow red by thinking of all the deaths that the humans had brought over her kind. And naturally he wouldn't understand her, he would say she should have trust in the future or say something else idiotic good hearted, he would...  
  
"I agree totally with you." Shaman answered instead.  
  
Demona could just look on him, speechless for some seconds, as no gargoyle she had ever spoken with had agreed with her on this before! At least, no leader...  
  
"You surely saw it in the eyes of the human woman whose daughter we have saved tonight," he explained "or the other who you saw at the signal point. The best of them barely tolerate us whereas the others just have no choice. Trusting them totally would mean death. This is the reason why I never go without one companion to them, at the beginning even with two."  
  
"But... " said Demona who had caught herself from this shock again "then why?"  
  
"Why I stay?" Shaman asked with a laugh "see from my viewpoint, we have no choice and my guardian-spirit agrees with me in this." He saw the confused look on her face and smiled. "guardian-spirits are the soul partner that every Shaman meet in the world between the worlds when he ascends to a real Shaman. They are our friends and guardians in the form of animals, they help us when we seek advice, my friend is... "  
  
"A hawk," Demona said "I saw him when you healed the girl."  
  
Shaman nodded. "Indeed, but he comes just sometimes to help me in really hard cases. When I need him otherwise, I travel to the world between the worlds. That he is a hawk is so because everyone gets the partner that his or her soul is linked to and everybody, even folk who are no Shaman, has a partner with the form who is adequate to him."  
  
He sighed. "Whatever, I think we have to arrange with the new humans here so or so and when we do it, we can it do at the same time here where we are somehow safe."  
  
"Will the guardian spirit stay forever?" Demona asked.  
  
"Yes," Shaman admitted "as long as there is a full Shaman in the clan who binds him with this sphere of living. To this, he has to have full contact with the sphere between the worlds and has to make a ritual every time when the circle of sun changes. One time in the year and just here on this plain, only then the guardian stays."  
  
"And you have a... " Demona started, but Shaman shook his head.  
  
"No," he answered "indeed I have no candidate in my clan who is old enough to be my successor or just apprentice. The candidates have all gone with my sister." He saw the disapproval in her eyes and continued "I know it is a risk to help the humans in this state, but think about it. Wouldn't it be a greater risk to let the humans know that I am irreplaceable for the clan?"  
  
Demona sighed and nodded, even when she did not like it, his words sounded logical. On the other hand, it did not make the bad feeling that she had every time when she saw how one of her kind relied on a human, disappear. She knew now that it would never end.  
  
"I don't like this!" Demona said honestly "I mean if one of your clan is outside the plain and they have to, they are prey! It is just a question of time when one of these humans will attack one of your clan, even when the most of them need you."  
  
Shaman's face darkened and Demona saw through the pain in his eyes that a part of his story had yet to come... A painful part.  
  
"They have already." He explained "one of my sisters died barely a year after the clan had split when she searched leaves for me, down in the woods. She had been shot through the heart from a gun behind her... She had no chance." He sighed and closed his eyes as if to make a clearer picture of her. "You have to know I liked her, more then the other females in my clan. Through my training to be a Shaman, I had myself pretty much alienated from my clan and later through my post as leader, I had even so a lot to do, beside the fact that we had not much females of my age anymore.... To make it clearer, a mate was not in sight, but if... "  
  
He looked again in her eyes and Demona nodded. She felt a kind of relationship to this gargoyle who was more than simple understanding. The time, so unbelievably ages ago came back to her mind, when she took training by the Archmage and so alienated herself pretty much from her siblings... and how she finally sacrificed the relationship with her green skinned brother, which could have so easily blossomed into mate-ship.  
  
Yes, she could understand him completely. It must have been hard, like had been for her, but it was for their clans. The only difference was that he could practice his arts openly while she had to hide her knowledge in magic as long as her clan existed and never discovered an opportunity to help her clan, just one time she could have....  
  
But this was past and now a question came to her mind.  
  
"What did you do?" She asked calmly "I mean, I would have killed all the humans with greatest joy."  
  
Shaman smiled weakly. "Oh I would have done it nearly..." Demona's eyes widened by this, as she couldn't imagine him, doing anything like that.  
  
"I was ready to kill all the humans in the valley and maybe would have gone on until I had expelled or killed all whites on this continent." Shaman said this calmly and just by this, Demona could see that he spoke the truth. "I stood there on the border of the plain and called the lightening, which came like a drum roll. I knew that the humans would all crouch in the corners of her houses, perhaps their holy books in the hands and praying that their God would help them and I even so knew that they prayed for nothing. This gave me an unbelievable feeling of satisfaction."  
  
He swallowed and continued "I did not hear the pleads of my clan to stop, but sent them away, angry that they dared to stop me in my rightful revenge... By the great spirit if they would have tried it more to stop me then I think I would have even killed them..." He looked again into Demona's eyes and his eyes were now full of despair and guild, "I was ready to kill my own clan for this!!!"  
  
He closed his eyes again and leaned back. The pain seemed too much for him, but then he felt the soft touch of Demona's claw on his shoulder and when he opened his eyes again, he saw just understanding and affection in her eyes, not hate or disgust like he had feared, as she sat beside him.  
  
She knew that this was hard for him. He seemed too good-hearted to kill even animals. Or just humans, but in the moment of rage he would have killed even his whole clan!!! This must have shocked him deeply.  
  
"Well," he continued with a bit more strength in his voice. "I went to the world between the worlds to call spirits, which should help me buy my vengeance. Dark spirits out of the darkest part of the worlds, hungry to kill, hungry to feel alive and they are all to willing to serve the person who lead them into this world... This means if this person can control them. But for the luck of the world and my clan, she waited there on me, she spoke to me and brought back the sense of honor in me and the sense for the way of our race and what I fought for."  
  
"When I came back I cried," he admitted, "I cried for the failure I nearly would have committed and cried for the death of my sister, which I hadn't done before. After I was ready, I felt as weak as never before in my life, but I knew what I had to do."  
  
"I glided down into the town and called the leaders of the community." Shaman said, "I knew that they knew the person who was responsible for this. My sister said this to me, but couldn't tell me his name since it wasn't allowed for her to influence the world of the living in such a direct way. I said this to them. I added that I would no longer help them as long as they wouldn't overhand me the responsible man." He swallowed, "it lasted one month until the daughter of a family in the west became sick. Scarlet fever, the whites call it and he pleaded for my help. I refused, even when he threw himself in front of my claws, but I demanded the same thing from him as I had demanded from the other men in the town, then I departed."  
  
"The next night, he started the fire again and when I came down. He, his oldest son and some other men from the town had gathered there, a chained man in their midst." He told me that it was a man who lived alone at the border of the town, a hunter who hunted game in the wood to sell the skin. I guessed already that it was he, but the look in his face confirmed it. They gave him to me and said I could do with him what I wanted to, but I should help the girl..." He laughed a bit "they thought I would tear him to pieces with my bare claws and for a moment I wanted to do exactly this. Then I looked on him, how he knelt there in front of me, shuddering, pleading for his life... crying!!! Then I recognized why he shot her from behind. He was nothing more than a coward, I doubt that he would have had the nerve to shoot a gargoyle from face to face, perhaps he did it to talk big about it from his friends, but whatever it didn't matter. I grabbed him at his throat and took him near to my face, so that I could look him deep in his eyes, his feet hanging above the earth and made my decision. I told the men to banish him and that he should never come under my eyes again or I would show him what true cruelty means."  
  
He smiled weakly. "I've never seen him again after I turned my back on him and went to help the girl.... I healed her from her disease, but she stayed deaf, If I would have healed her the day before, she would have stayed completely healthy." The last words seemed really painful for him.  
  
"Do you regret it?" Demona asked calmly.  
  
Shaman shook his head "I regret that this girl had to suffer, but not for what I did. If I had overseen this for my clan then that would have been unbearable! I mean if I hadn't shown the humans that I wouldn't tolerate this, perhaps more of them would have harmed my clan, but since this time, nothing has happened."  
  
There was some seconds of silence, until Demona started.  
  
"You could have done more," she argued "I mean seemingly all humans in the town knew who had killed your sister and nobody had the decency to tell it you... They all deserve punishment."  
  
"Sure," Shaman admitted, "but what should I have done?"  
  
Demona thought about it some seconds. "What about your power," she asked calmly "can't you ask the ghosts to help you, to make your clan safe for all time, to expel the humans of this valley?"  
  
Shaman sighed. "It is not so easy. My powers, which is indeed the power of the spirits who are willing to help me are not mine... Besides as Shaman I have sworn an oath that I would use this energy just for the benefit of my clan, of our allies and all living things, which are worth this. Else mean...." He swallowed again, then he sighed  
  
"Wait, I will show it to you, come." With this, Shaman raised from his bed and, even when he was still weak, stood on his claws.  
  
"You should stay in the bed." Demona said, with a slightly worried expression on her face. "You're still weak and the disease will not heal properly."  
  
"This little cold?" He asked amused, even when she heard from his voice that it cost him much energy.  
  
She nodded and followed him deeper into the cave, many minutes through many windings, until they came to a larger room and the dust she breathed in showed her that nobody had entered it in many years.  
  
In the middle of the room was a table... but this wasn't interesting for Demona at the moment, since she saw the strange statues in every one of the four corners of the room.  
  
They had wings like gargoyles, but they were of feathers unlike her own and they were, even when they were folded, larger than normal gargoyles. Instead of loincloths they wore something, which seemed like a mix of body armor and cowl, whose cowl hide their faces in the dark. Their bodies were as large as Shamans, but somehow they seemed larger, with an unearthly dignity and beauty, with runes decorated, stoneswords they held in front of their bodies made clear that they were guardians, ever watchful and full of power. But Demona knew just one word for them...  
  
"Angels." She whispered in confusion and Shaman noticed this.  
  
"My lady?" He asked "what is it?"  
  
"These are statues of angels," Demona explained "creatures who serve God in the human bible. In the human churches of the old continent they are often shown, as in windows or as statues like here."  
  
Shaman shook his head. "This can't be," he said with certainty in his voice, "these statues, like this cave, are older then the start of the Christian timeline. Much, much older. They represent the Aleka Nobake, the guardian spirits of the light and have been made at the beginning, as guardians like their models and to honor them."  
  
Shaman stopped a moment and Demona nearly saw how it worked in his head. "Maybe they are both," he explained "your angels might be the same one. They are just called other names. They serve the light, the first good, maybe the Christian God is just one misunderstood form of this, but whatever, look."  
  
He showed her the stone table and Demona followed his claw, to find two swords lying on it. They were the same like the statues were, just that these were real, their blades glanced and an unearthly light seemed to come of the runes. They had no dust on them, just beside of them and this showed Demona that they hadn't been moved for a damned long time. A part of her wanted to touch them, but she waited, in order not to embarrass her host and looked on him, her eyes glittering with questions.  
  
"These are the swords of the Aleka Nobake. You might call them even angel- swords, given to us by them in order to prevent the worst." He looked deep into her eyes "and the worst is something we always have to count with."  
  
When he saw that his guest was even more confused, he continued. "See the reason that I brought you here was because of your question, why I don't use my powers in a more offensive way, and I am going to answer this. A long time ago, before this continent was populated with the humans who are now extinguished and expelled. There lived only our kind here, spread over the whole continent from one ocean to another, full of clans. But then something happened, something that is called the Great Darkness. A Shaman had tasted the dark power... the Kole Nako. I really have no words in your language to describe it. Imagine the power of evil, which already exists as long as the light, even longer before, some believe. It waits there in the world between the worlds to prey Shamans who just begin to ascend and make their first trip to the world of limbo."  
  
"Nobody knows why it happened just then," Shaman said "or why this evil, which had never before been there could do this, but we knew what it had done. The Shaman was now more powerful than ever, as the darkness had claimed him and it showed itself in the darkness in his eyes... and his soul. He wandered over the country, free of the stone sleep with no need to rest or sleep, bringing nothing but pain and death, making massacres unimaginable for my ancestors and they had nothing to stop him with. No weapon could kill or even hurt him permanently. They called upon all the spirits they knew, but the evil was more powerful and there was nothing they could do... Finally, one went deeper into the world of twilight than any other had done before. He wanted to find the power that could fight against this evil because in life and death there is a balance and so there had to be a way. He was in a trance for days and my clan finally gave up hope for his comeback, but just when the clan prepared for the battle that we knew we couldn't win, he came back and he had two companions. They were the Aleka Nobake. The guardians of light that fight against the darkness and still do. After a fierce battle, which shook the earth itself and it is said that this plain was formed by it. They were able to kill the creature, which had once been a gargoyle."  
  
He threw a long look on the statues of the angels... or the Aleka Nobake, and Demona understood now why they had been created. To remind them of what had happened and to honor them out of gratitude.  
  
Shaman looked back to Demona. "You can imagine how grateful we were to them, but they weren't interested in such. They gave us these two swords and two more which the rest of my clan has taken with them on the trips westwards. Then they said from now on, we had to be ever watchful of every Shaman who ascends since this would be the time when the darkness may try to get into his heart, and so we have. From that time forth. Every apprentice Shaman has, when they make their first journey to the land of twilight, an honor guard of four clan members and the present Shaman at his side. They wait at the entrance of the tent and check him afterwards to see if he is infected with the evil. When he is, it is his death sentence, despite the fact that he was a brother or sister once, it is for his own good and the best for the world."  
  
"How often does this happens?" Demona asked nearly unbelieving. The way he told it, shamanism seemed much more dangerous than simple sorcery.  
  
Shaman shook his head "Not often at all. Indeed, the last time it happened has become no more than a legend. An unbelievable time has past since this... But we are forever watchful, who know when the evil shows itself again."  
  
Demona thought about Shaman's story. "But if these Shamans who have tasted the darkness, are so powerful then how can the honor guard do anything against them?"  
  
"The only thing, which allows this, is the fact that they don't receive their powers directly after they come back from the world of twilight." Shaman explained, "they just have the knowledge of the darkness, but aren't more powerful than they were before. To do this they have to do a ritual first, which allows them to take more of the dark energy with them from the world of twilight."  
  
By the look in Shaman's eyes, Demona knew that she didn't really want to know what this ritual was, but she had to ask.  
  
"What ritual?"  
  
Shaman explained it to her.  
  
Demona believed she was going to become sick. She had heard a lot of cruel things, but this!!!  
  
"I believe this explains why my clan is damned cautious in this... " He explained "and why we refuse to seek the help of more aggressive spirits. The price might be too high, much too high."  
  
Demona nodded.  
  
"And these swords... " She started "are in case that such a thing might happen again."  
  
Shaman nodded. "They said these swords would be the only thing on earth, which is able to stop the evil and they gave it to us because they said they couldn't help us the next time. A sort of war was going on in their own realm and we haven't heard of them since this time. We just take the swords with us when a new Shaman ascends."  
  
Demona looked at the swords and touched one. She could feel power of a sort that she had never felt before.  
  
"Am I allowed to take them?" She asked calmly.  
  
Shaman nodded.  
  
She took the sword and held it in her claw, then made some movements that she had learnt from her teacher. This blade felt good, it was well balanced and lighter then Demona had supposed it was, it even felt warm.  
  
Slowly, she looked on the blade in front of her and touched it with her claw. She cut herself in a finger and licked on it to stop the bleeding. To her surprise, the blood on the blade didn't stay there, but rolled down from it onto the ground of the cave while the runes shone even brighter...  
  
~The sword seemingly doesn't like blood~ Demona thought, but at once thought further, ~don't be a fool! It has no awareness... I hope?~  
  
Demona sighed and put the sword back on the table.  
  
"Your clan has a long history Shaman." Demona noticed.  
  
"Yes and we are proud of it." Shaman admitted.  
  
Demona looked deep into his eyes. Could she trust him? She had told her story to other clans before, but it had not been accepted very well anywhere, but he seemed different from all the other gargoyles that she had met before.  
  
"There is something I have to tell you." Demona said calmly "come, let us go up. It is the story of my life."  
  
Shaman looked on her in wonder, "it is long?"  
  
Demona nodded, "centuries long."  
  
They went up together and while they went up, Demona noticed that her wound hadn't closed and still bled a bit.  
  
~So these swords are more powerful than even the Fay's magic~ Demona noticed ~how interesting.~  
  
Up there she told him everything, the massacre on Wyvern through the humans and how her second clan died through the betrayal of another ally, the centuries of loneliness, ever hunted and never peace...  
  
08.08.98; 23:54; Castle Wyvern, Great Hall:  
  
The entire clan was silent, listening to Demona's fascinating story, even some of the hatchlings, Connor amongst them. He had somehow managed to escape the elders who had herded them and now listened unnoticed by the clan.  
  
"After I told it to him, I allowed him to tell the story to the clan, like the fact that I was a sorceress." Demona explained "in the end he asked me to stay, even when I wanted to travel further west in order to find other clans, and I agreed."  
  
She sighed. "He taught me the art of shamanism and his language while I taught him how to read English and some minor magic tricks." She said, "he had potential and the right spirit, so he easily could have become a more cunning sorcerer, but he had a clan to lead, even so to teach me shamanism and so didn't have the time for this."  
  
Demona bit her lip. "Finally, I became a Shaman, his second... " She hesitated shortly, trying not to look at Goliath, "... and his mate."  
  
Goliath on the contrary starred at his former mate and a part in him really woke up at this moment.  
  
~Did I really think she would have stayed abstinent all this time?~ He asked himself ~that she had waited on me all these centuries without living on?~  
  
But he had, at least a part of him had. Yet when he had fallen in love with Elisa, he still believed that a part of Demona still loved him.  
  
A part of him reminded a night, now 1023 years ago, where a soft voice spoke.  
  
*Take this token of my love. Cherish it always, as I will cherish my half. Upon this, I pledge my heart to you forever.*  
  
~How long is forever for you Demona?~ Goliath asked her silently while clenching his fists, but then he rebuked himself.  
  
~She had spent at least 600 years without a mate while you chose Elisa just 2 years after you awakened. Even though she had betrayed you, it is a short time to get over her.~ He thought, but just ended up asking himself another question ~what if she had another mate before Shaman?~  
  
Suddenly, he felt a soft touch beside him and he looked around to see his Elisa standing by him, smiling slightly. In this moment, he forgot his grudge and jealousy and was happy for Demona with full heart. At least she had not been alone all this time because she had waited on him and this made Goliath feel better.  
  
"15 years later was hatching season." Demona interrupted his thoughts.  
  
13.06.1638; 00:56; The Clan's Rookery:  
  
Demona looked on and leaned on the muscular chest of her mate in the rookery of her clan and the 7 eggs that lay there, especially the one in front of her and waited for them all to hatch.  
  
While she did so, she thought about her life, her new life with her new clan. It had taken her two years until she fully understood the language of her clan and five more until she had become a full Shaman in their eyes.  
  
She looked down at her chest where her amulet lay, which had been given to her by her *partner* when she had ascended to a full Shaman. It was still weird for her to see the face of a panther with eyes like emeralds, brighten the face out of a sort of dark stone.  
  
With the help of Shaman, she had made her first trip to the world between the worlds and it was so strange from all that she had known.  
  
The things in that place had been clear and unclear at the same time and she had just gasped at it after looking around and seeing the panther. It... or better, her coat had been darker than the darkest night and her eyes had been green, wild and pride like Demona's own.  
  
When the panther or her companion turned and went off, she had followed her instinctively so that the panther had shown her places in this world, which she still couldn't describe with all the words she knew.  
  
After this trip, she had discovered the amulet in her tent and was at first confused, but then she took it and wore it since that night. Later, Shaman had explained to her that it was a gift of her partner to show the bond between them.  
  
With this, she had even so become their second, accepted by all clan members. A fact, which honored Demona deeply and she had vowed to herself that she would protect them from all evil... with her life.  
  
She snuggled herself deeper into her mate's arms and he embraced her tightly, which made her feel so safe. Then it was time, as the eggs soon would hatch and a new cycle would start for the clan.  
  
While looking around, Demona noticed with a smile, the good feeling inside of her. She felt like she hadn't felt for a long time.  
  
Yes, this was her clan like the others had been. She knew it when she looked on the hatchlings. They were adolescents after their ascent in the year before, of the last rookery that had even so gathered with the clan to look on this happening. She had come to look upon these hatchlings as her own, like she had of the ones in Moray and Wyvern, even when she knew that not all of them was biologically hers, but this didn't matter, since such a bound was more a human custom.  
  
The hatchlings who had gathered to witness this miracle had indeed accepted her as first in the clan and had become very fond of her, which was not simply founded in the fact that she had brought new stories with her. Stories of her old clan and stories of her own journeys that the younglings still listened to with the greatest of interest.  
  
She looked further around at the newest part of the clan. Gargoyles, who looked like the ones in Scotland, from the mighty Holy Roman Empire of German Nations, which was now at war with itself and their even so powerful neighbors France and Sweden who wanted to get use of its weakness.  
  
Once, Demona had traveled through this large country, which was indeed many little or middle large states, and could speak their language even when the dialect was much different from this one she knew.  
  
Indeed, it had been three groups of gargoyles that came from this country. The first group was from Bohemia where the war had started, the second from Vienna and the third of the Lower Saxon where the war had raged very cruelly since Denmark had attacked it. After this, Sweden and finally France attacked through self-torment and weakened the empire bringing more death and pain.  
  
The war had still lasted when the gargoyles had immigrated to the New World and after what she had heard from them, it would still last some years.  
  
~Foolish humans, ~ Demona thought, ~why can't they simply live in peace? ~  
  
From what the gargoyles had told them, the war played havoc with the countries and even came to the cities and when the situation became too dangerous, the people in Vienna blamed the gargoyles of being demons who brought the war. As if a gargoyle could do such a thing?! They were both expelled when their clans were destroyed when the humans ransacked their cities. With a lot of luck, the survivors escaped and came to America in order to find a world free of human war. Guided by the spirits, Demona and Shaman discovered them and brought them to the clan.  
  
Together, it had been 17 mostly young and healthy gargoyles since the weak and old ones had died on the long journey. With Demona's help as interpreter, because not even Shaman spoke their language, they all became integrated into the clan very quickly. The first ones even laid their eggs in the rookery, partly with mates from their old home, but partly even so with mates from their new, more peaceful home.  
  
"Look, it hatches my love." Her mate said with love in his voice and at once she turned her attention back to the present where her egg was going to hatch.  
  
She knelt down before the egg, which had got delicate drafts in the shell that enlarged rapidly with quiet cracks. Finally, a leg came out of the shell then another and finally. the whole egg collapsed and allowed a full view of the hatchling.  
  
The newly hatched gargoyle at once protested to be freed of its long year home with a loud screaming, but Demona just smiled, picked her up and cradled her in her arms, in which the hatchling calmed down.  
  
It was a female! Demona had already suspected this through the colouring of the egg and she was beautiful indeed. She had a contrast similar to that of her mother. Her hair was darker than the night, her body structure like hers whereas the colour of her skin was perhaps a bit darker. That and the two little horns, which were above the girl's forehead, were something Demona hadn't got. Aside from that, she was nearly identical to her.  
  
But her mate, who stood beside her, noticed something other.  
  
"She has your eyes." He said with a smile on his beak and Demona noticed it now while looking into those wide open eyes that studied her in wonder. These were indeed her eyes!  
  
She looked up to her mate who had started to softly touch his daughter. Even though she would grow up as child of the clan, there would forever be a special bound between her and her parents and they both knew it.  
  
Softly, Shaman embraced his mate with his newly hatched daughter in her arms and at this moment, Demona felt completely happy while looking on her daughter.  
  
~My light in the darkness. ~  
  
To be continued... soon. 


	2. Live

5.In the Aftermath (2/3) Live  
  
13.06.1638; 03:27; The Clan's Rookery:  
  
The rookery had been cleaned of the innards of the eggs like of most eggshells. Just seven middle large eggshells, one of every egg, had been placed in front of a fire, in which shaman put some leaves while murmuring some strange words, which nearly sounded like a song.  
  
Demona, holding the little hatchling with the great resemblance to her whom she had just nursed and who was now playing, with the greatest joy, with her talisman in her arms. She had been trained nearly ten years in the art of shamanism and a part of her told her that she would, like with magic, learn forever, but it was still weird for her to feel the walls between the worlds become thinner.... Or more accurately, a hole was getting made.  
  
By this, she remembered again the large difference between shamanism and magic, which people who were untaught in these arts, oversaw so easily.  
  
Magic was the art to use energy, to take it either from the world around someone or to use a medium, which allowed someone to use the magic energy around him better. It was an active art, something the sorcerer had the control about and was responsible to use.  
  
But even in this, there were differences like for example, the mortal magic and the one of the third race. Mortals mainly used magic through mediums or by using the magic around them, which was a bit risky, since on this way they became the medium by their self and the energies could become too much, which led to the death of the sorcerer.  
  
Her former teacher, the Archmage, had always tried to gather thus mediums, like the Grimoran, the Phoenix Gate and once she had heard him murmuring about the Eye of Odin, but Demona had been more centered on improving her magic skills than to gather powerful artifacts. She relied on herself.  
  
The ones who were able to guide magic were like portals that allowed the magic to float. Some were large, others small, some could control the magic better and other tries in magic ended often in wild magic, a kind of magic which couldn't be controlled and thus was a threat for even the sorcerer like his opponent, not to speak of the other person present.  
  
Fay and other magical beings were different. As far as Demona knew, they were mostly composed of magic and thus were their own source of magical energy, which was differently powerful, but most powerful by their leader, Oberon.  
  
This made Fay superior to the mortal sorcerers, since they had to catalyze the magic energy with the help of spells and mediums while Fay simply used the energy they were born with... or whatever way they ever came into this world.  
  
And as far as Demona knew, Dragons were another thing, but she had never met such and so did not know it exactly. Just that there was the time when the Archmage had taken the dragon stone.... But that was another story.  
  
But no magic that she knew could be compared with the shamanism. It wasn't the art to handle energies, but to melt worlds. This was the best way Demona could describe it.  
  
The first time she had called a spirit under the eyes of her teacher and mate, she had used leaves to allow her spirit to call him and it was as if she had tasted something she had never tasted before. As a shaman, it wasn't the thing to summon energy, but to call spirits who had this energy, or the skills they needed. This made Demona feel a bit uneasy, since she had to rely on the help of others for this, even when it was spirits, but she had learned to accept it.  
  
Now she saw to her mate, who stood in front of the fire and started to speak.  
  
"Brothers and sisters, my clan." He started. "Tonight is a wonderful night for us, our hatchlings have finally hatched and so a new cycle of our clan has started. Now, like it is tradition, we will perform the ritual of the arriving, like our clan did since the beginning of time."  
  
With this, he threw another leaf on the fire, which sent a well smelling scent throughout the room and the hatchlings in the arms of their clan mothers seemingly liked it even so.  
  
Then, with some murmuring, Shaman threw the first egg shell in the fire. At once, sparks emerged out of the center of the fire and made a column of dire, coming up about the fire.  
  
Then out of this column, came a spirit. It seemed to be made out of the sparks of the fire itself and it had the appearance of a wolf. Quickly, it floated through the room, to a hatchling with the features of a wolf and dark brown coat, who studied the spirit in pure wonder through large, innocent eyes. Then the spirit went in him like it was just air.  
  
The hatchling gulped in surprise, but the clan mother who held him just smiled and passed her hand over the hatchling's full stomach to calm him down and show him that everything was okay. After this, the little wolf snuggled his little snout at the elder's breast and fell asleep.  
  
Demona saw how Shaman threw another eggshell into the fire and again, a spirit with the appearance of an animal came out off the fire. This time it was a panther and Demona thought she could hear it roaring. It came floating through the air... and exactly in Demona's direction.  
  
The hatchling in her arms seemed to look directly into the panther's fiery eyes that seemed to study her even so. Then the panther leaped directly into the surprised hatchling and vanished.  
  
"Seems that we have something in common," she said to the confused hatchling in Scottish and softly stroke her black hair.  
  
Some time later, the other five eggshells had been thrown into the fire and the rest of the newly hatched gargoyles had got their guardian spirit. Like her mate had told her, these were creatures that sometimes, even when it was very rare for non-shamans, came to their partner to help them. Sometimes they came in their dreams to give them advice, sometimes clan members had said that they had seen them in the woods, but naturally these could have been just simple animals.  
  
On every case the new clan members became their nicknames after these animals and even when these nicknames weren't seen as true names like of humans, they had the function of it.  
  
"Second?" A voice spoke behind her and Demona turned around to see one of the clan mothers, one of whom had escaped from Germany and who had been chosen to care for the hatchlings.  
  
"Yes?" The second asked even though she knew what the clan mother, her clan sister wanted.  
  
"It is time to change them."  
  
Demona nodded, softly stroking the sleeping hatchling's hair and then handed her daughter over to the clan mother who took her and brought her over to the other hatchlings.  
  
~My daughter?~ Demona asked herself. ~No, a daughter of the clan, this is our way~  
  
Demona knew this because as second, it wasn't her job to care for the hatchlings in this way, not until it came to their warrior training. Yet, even though she wouldn't change her position for the world and knew she couldn't take another position other than a warrior... When she saw the female take the hatchling away, a slight pain came over her chest.  
  
She sighed and looked around the room until she discovered her mate who was looking after another hatchling with the features of a bear.  
  
~No,~ Demona thought, ~I have everything I need.~  
  
06.03.1649; 21:23; On the border of the plain:  
  
It was a fresh spring night in the mountains, the snow had not yet completely melted away, but it was clear that life was conquering the territory back that it had lost during the cold months, since the green coming up under the snow.  
  
But the fact that it was still very cold did not bother the proud creatures, which had gathered to teach their young generation the skill, which would become the most significant in their life. Like eons before, it was time for the gargoyles to teach their youngsters the art of gliding, and the powerful winds on this night were perfect for this.  
  
Together with some other members of her clan, the second glided nearly perfectly still in front of the hatchlings who had just a year before left the rookery in order to make room for the new eggs, and now stood, still a bit unsure, in front of the plain.  
  
"Don't fear." Demona told the hatchlings in front of them with a short smile. "This is your first practice in gliding and we will be there to help you." She looked to the dark haired hatchling straight in front of her who had become more similar to her from year to year. This one had already one practice in gliding.  
  
One month ago, the hatchling like her siblings had moved out off the rookery the year before to make place for the new eggs. One of which was one from the second again. She had crept away from the elders, beyond the borders they had made to hold the hatchlings in and went to the edge of the plain. Just to look down on the valley was what she had said afterwards. She had approached near the edge and finally fallen when a stone had loosened. Luckily Demona, watchful by her duties as clan mother and as second, had discovered the absence of the hatchling in time and caught her in the air.  
  
She could have brought her back to the other hatchlings at once, but instead she had decided to show her how elders glided. She had made some loops with her in her arms and the hatchling had laughed by sheer happiness. Demona had then told her that she would always be there to catch her before bringing her back to her siblings.  
  
The hatchlings were not meant to be forced to go over the edge, but by their own decision in trusting the elders and in their own instincts. So this was at the same time, training for both their wings and their souls.  
  
The black haired female hatchling was the first one and with a little run- up she leaped herself in the air, spread her small wings... and the wind held her up in the air.  
  
Demona could barely stop a laughter of happiness when she saw her daughter gliding in front of her and the hatchling seemed to enjoy this even so as a step on her way to becoming like the elders of her clan... Or, even like the second.  
  
But in this joy, she did not concentrate on her wings like she had to and was even distracted by the happy laughter of her siblings beside her who now tried to glide. She completely lost the control of her wings and fell like a stone in the deep.  
  
But the second was there to catch her before she had even fallen half the way to the ground and while holding her daughter on her angle, she whispered, "I'll always be there to catch you."  
  
She then glided upwards and took the little hand of the hatchling in hers, so that they glided beside each other.  
  
"When you glide you have to concentrate on gliding." Demona explained to the hatchling beside her. "The winds can change easily so you have to be careful."  
  
The hatchling nodded and Demona smiled shortly.  
  
"Now glide to your siblings." She said and gave the hatchling freedom to the wind, on which the hatchling glided not greatly, but without falling down, to her siblings and the elders who took care for their safety.  
  
Demona looked on the hatchling with a small smile and then turned her attention to the other hatchlings, since it was her duty as second to look after all hatchlings of her clan and to see how they did.  
  
And what she saw made her smile again. All did well and glided excitedly beside and under the watchful eyes of their elders. It wasn't the best in the art of gliding she had ever seen, but for the first gliding lesson it was okay.  
  
When she saw that some of the hatchlings grew tired, she ordered them to land. They did so, guarded by the elders and Demona landed in front of them. One of them had landed on all fours, but Demona was going to oversee this since it was their first landing.  
  
"Well done hatchlings." Demona explained "with this you have taken an important step to becoming full grown members of the clan." When the noticed the proud looks of the hatchlings' eyes she added, "which is naturally still a long way away. But for tonight it is enough. I know that some of your wings will ache, but don't worry as it is natural and will stop soon and so... I think you have earned an extra large portion of the meal tonight that the elder has cooked at the gathering place."  
  
The hatchlings laughed happily and ran to the gathering place, as there were many things that they liked and eating was definitely near the top amongst this.  
  
She stayed at the place and looked at how the hatchlings, followed by the elders, went to the gathering place, when strong arms embraced her from behind circling his feathered wings around her.  
  
"And how are the hatchlings doing?" Shaman asked his mate softly.  
  
Demona smiled. "Very well my leader, very well." She explained with pride, "they are gifted, clever and eager... as far as I can say for their first day of training."  
  
"Who am I to mistrust the judgement of my second?" Shaman asked with a laugh.  
  
Demona turned around to look at her mate in the eyes. He had become older since the night they had met. It had after all been 25 years since then and he had even become a bit larger, but this didn't matter since he had been biologically as old as she was when they had first met and so they were this didn't matter... still.  
  
But this was future and Demona wanted to live in the present... The wonderful life that she had with her clan and her mate.  
  
06.06.1668; 03:14; On a plain in the valley, far away from the town,:  
  
"I want this faster of you younglings." The second demanded after looking at the young gargoyles practice their fighting skills. "Your enemies will neither have mercy with your weaknesses or with your slow tempo."  
  
Demona looked around and saw with satisfaction and pride how the younglings indeed fastened their attacks on another, even when she did not show it to them. The younglings did well and since, with their ascendance 10 years ago, their true education in the art of war had started, they improved every day.  
  
It wasn't really usual in this clan that the second was at the same time responsible for the training of the youngsters. But since she had shown in many training fights with other clan members that she was definitely the best, not to speak the experienced warriors in the clan, everybody thought it a good idea to let her teach the clan's young ones.  
  
Besides the training in the art of war and hunt, she had, together with her mate, achieved what the clan had accepted, training in the English language and in reading, in order to make the hatchlings fit for handling with humans later in their lives.  
  
Goliath would have argued that in such a way they would understand the humans better and would in the end serve a better understanding of their two races so that through this the humans wouldn't see them as dump beasts.  
  
Demona argued that knowledge was power, a fact she had learned by the Archmage, and to know more about the world around them, which was unfortunately ruled by the humans, would make it easier for the future generations of the clan to survive. Shaman had argued even so, since he had heard from Indian tribes in the west who had, unknowingly, underlined declarations, which handed over their land legally to the whites.  
  
In the end, the clan had agreed, but had combined this with the condition that only those who truly wanted this would be taught in the art of reading and writing. Actually three of them had accepted this and now learned reading by Shaman for one hour a night.  
  
Demona was very happy, seeing a special female hatchling with dark black hair amongst them who was seemingly the most gifted in this.  
  
Even now, standing there and seeing the youngsters practicing their fighting skills, Demona noticed that two hatchlings were doing better than the other, the female with the black hair and her brother who had the features of a wolf with a white coat.  
  
She had even noticed that they spent more time together than with the rest of their siblings, even when it was just games and training lessons they did. It became clear that they felt more for each other than simple friendship between siblings.  
  
~Is it again time for this?~ Demona asked herself curiously and then remembering that she had just been a few years older when she started her relationship with her green skinned brother. She sighed.  
  
~Years truly float fast when you are happy like the humans say,~ she noticed, ~haven't they just learned to glide?~  
  
More than 20 new eggs waited in the rookery to hatch... and again one of the eggs was hers.  
  
In thoughts Demona touched her stomach, it has been again nearly a month since she had laid her egg and she had got her old figure again in less than two nights. A side effect of the spell which made her immortal and something most of the females in the clan, of whom some still didn't had their old figure, were damned jealous of.  
  
Her thoughts returned to the current group of hatchlings, next time it was already time that they learned gliding and her thoughts drifted to a special male hatchling. He had the features of a hawk and deep brown eyes... all in all he was, despite the fact that he had white feathers around his head, damned similar to his father.  
  
~if he would even so jump from the plain if I ask him?~ Demona asked herself. She and the hatchling weren't very close, he was a child of the clan... like her daughter was, just that Demona saw that there was more between them, or she simply dreamed.  
  
But then she noticed something, which brought her back to the present. The black haired youngster and her partner seemingly weren't really focussed in fighting any more and their attacks and counter attacks became more than slow.  
  
"What's this?" She asked them hard both while coming nearer to them. "Do you think that when you are too lazy to fight, your opponent will allow you a break?"  
  
Both younglings starred at the second in shock, they really seemed to have their thoughts on other places.  
  
Demona sighed, as she had a good idea on what they were thinking, but this did not calm her.  
  
"You two against me," she ordered, "now!"  
  
They both nodded, as they knew better than to not follow the second's orders.  
  
They put themselves in front of her, took the standard fight position that their teacher had taught them and raised their swords against the unarmed teacher.  
  
"Well? I don't have all night!" Demona noted when the younglings did not try to attack.  
  
The female took a deep breath and attacked the second with a fast movement of her sword. Unfortunately the second was faster and easily moved out of the swords way and grabbed the youngling by the claws and threw her to the earth while she grabbed the sword at the same time.  
  
With this, she blocked an attack of the other youngling and threw his sword with a hard blow out of his claw, since he held it with just one claw.  
  
Then she held her sword against his throat while she held the female with her foot on the female's back down and doing this so hard that she knew it would hurt.  
  
"I against you two and what are you now?" She asked with a hard glance on the male in front of her.  
  
"Dead," the male answered embarrassed and Demona shook her head.  
  
"No, just defeated." Demona explained hard. "If I were an enemy then you would be dead... Have you any idea why?"  
  
Finally, she released the female from her foot and while she stood up, she studied her and made it clear that she wanted this answer from her.  
  
The youngling swallowed uneasily, under the hard glance of her teacher, but one of the first things she had been taught by her was to stand upright and don't hide herself in front of her like a sheep.  
  
"Well you were better. " She said ".and faster."  
  
Demona shook her head. "To be better means to do something other from this what you call a fighting style," she said and saw with approval how the female winced a bit. "And this is what I wanted to hear from you, but since you can't answer me this then I wasn't faster than you. Maybe we had even the same quickness... if you would take your training seriously and I haven't seen any signs of this yet. I simple saw how you attacked because you had moved in my direction even before your arms did, so I knew where the attack would come from and could prepare. Then you held your sword with both claws while attacking me, which is an even bigger mistake since I could easily take both of your claws and disarm you much easier. You have to train harder, next time I want to see improvements in your stile."  
  
The female nodded under the hard glance of the second, more than a bit embarrassed to be criticized in front of her siblings and Demona looked on the male youngling.  
  
"And you were much too slow, too." she criticized "Your idea to attack me while I was busy attacking her was good, but it was done like that of a hatchling, not like that of a warrior in training. The way you held the sword was wrong for this way of attack since you saw that I already had a sword. So you have to take your sword in both claws so that your sword is both weapon and shield, otherwise it is easy to disarm you how I did. I hope you understand."  
  
The male nodded.  
  
"Shall we continue with the practicing?" He asked, happy to let this lesson of his teacher end.  
  
Demona looked in the sky and saw that the moon was near setting.  
  
"No, this is enough for tonight for you all." she said and saw how the younglings relaxed happily.  
  
She looked to the black haired female who had started to go away with her brother.  
  
"You both stay here." She said.  
  
Demona could see her wincing a bit, a fact she did not take well. She wanted the girl to take her lessons seriously so that one day she would become a fine warrior, but that wasn't likely if she feared her.  
  
When they came closer again to the teacher while the others went away, Demona once more studied her. Indeed she had grown up to a promising female. Even though some of her features were still childish, her dark hair nearly glittered in the night and the deep green eyes really sparkled on her. The horns on her forehead did not seem to grow and were still as large as when they had hatched.  
  
"Yes teacher." The female said and stood now in front of her, beside her brother.  
  
"You know that the clan chooses apprentices in the art of shamanism and we have decided that you have the necessary potential to become such." Demona explained to them and the gray eyes of the male, wolf-like youngster sparkled. "It is a difficult education and a hard way, combined with a great responsibility when you finally become a shaman, but I and the leader agree that you both have not just the potential, but even the strength to become such. If you agree to it."  
  
Both younglings studied her like she had become crazy and Demona sighed. She knew that it was a great honor for them to become the apprentices in shamanism and so with great certainty, would be leader some day, but they still had no idea how hard this could be.  
  
"To make this clear, it isn't fun!" She explained again. "Your warrior training will be continued beside these and I won't tolerate that you lower your effort in this. This means you will have less time to spent with your siblings... You have to regard this when you make your choice."  
  
The male and the female youngling looked in each other's eyes and then both nodded.  
  
"We know that it will be hard teacher," the male youngster said "but we want it."  
  
The female nodded in approval. "It is a great honor for us." She explained. "We want to serve the clan and this is the best way for it."  
  
Demona looked on both the younglings and then she nodded.  
  
"Okay," she said "from now on you both are apprentices in shamanism, I will speak to you later to make clear when your training will start. Then there is still something other." Again she looked on both. "How you know I am searching for apprentices in magic and it has become clear that out of your siblings, just you have the potential."  
  
"Magic?" The female youngling asked surprised.  
  
The elder nodded. "Yes," she explained, "it is so hard and needs time. When you decide to learn it you will have even less time than just with the education to a shaman. And because your training as warriors and as shamans come first, your training in the art of magic would be long... Else you can naturally decide to learn it later, it is your choice."  
  
Both seemed to think about it. Magic hadn't the same fame in the clan as had shamanism, but for luck, it even so wasn't as feared as it had been in her clan and others that she had met.  
  
In the last rookery, Shaman had not found any of them with the potential to be capable of becoming a shaman. There had been three who would surely have become good sorcerers. But when she had asked them, nobody was interested and didn't want to sacrifice any of their free time to learn such.  
  
Even now the male youngling shook his head.  
  
"I am sorry second," he explained, "but I am not interested in such... and it would really need too much time."  
  
Demona nodded calmly and did not show her disappointment. She then looked to the female who seemed to be still thinking about it.  
  
Demona did not have much hope, as she knew that her daughter and her other clan son were close, so there was less hope that...  
  
"I want to learn it." The female explained, much to Demona's and the female's brother surprise.  
  
Demona, who did not show her surprise and happiness, simply nodded.  
  
"I will speak to you later when we start the lesson." Demona explained "you can go."  
  
Both younglings nodded and went off.  
  
They glided through the night back to the plain, when it broke out of the male youngling with the nickname wolf... It was ever usual in a generation that they got the nickname of their guardian spirit.  
  
"Sister why have you done this?" He asked her. "You won't have enough time to be with our siblings any more!"  
  
~To be with me...~ He added in thought  
  
"I will have." The female said, "and I am interested in the art of magic. The second said it is an important weapon with which we could defend our clan."  
  
"Mphh," Wolf snorted, "I would never critic our second's judgement, but what she has shown us of this magic until now were just tricks. I mean, to make fire with a word... Lumirare... Lukimus..."  
  
"Luminus." The female added helpfully.  
  
Wolf nodded. "What is the point in this?"  
  
"She hasn't shown us more of this magic because it is no game." The female said, "magic has to be used carefully, even so like shamanism."  
  
"And you don't do this just because you want to spend more time with our second, Little Panther?" Wolf teased and got, as an answer, a kick of the female's tail hard on his chest.  
  
Wolf grinned, at the full length of his snout. Little Panther was a good sister... and friend, but her temper was nothing he wanted to play with, since she could become damned rough.  
  
Little Panther, how she was called sometimes... and which she really hated, looked hard on him. Every one of her rookery siblings knew that Little Panther totally adored the second, Demona or Great Panther, as she was called sometimes, even more than she was adored by the others. And everybody knew that she would rather die than tell this to her hard teacher.  
  
"I am simply interested in magic!" Little Panther explained "okay?!"  
  
Wolf just smirked at her while they glided further.  
  
02.08.1672; 02:35; On an open place in the wood, far away from the town:  
  
Demona stood aside her mate and looked at the deep forest before her. It was the time of ascending in their clan like Demona had made it with her own rookery.  
  
In her new clan, ascending was much the same as it had been in her old clan, which surprised Demona since there were many differences between Scottish and Indian clans. There were tests to see the art of gliding when the youngsters had to glide a special route in time, the art of fighting where the youngsters had to fight against an elder in order to prove their fighting skills. Then there was the test of mind, where the skills of the youngsters' spirits were tested.  
  
The special youngster, who they were waiting for, hadn't passed the first test so well like Demona had guessed she would and it had shown that she would never be the best or fastest glider in the clan. In the art of fighting though she had been the best and had even been able to defeat the elder she had to battle since he had underestimated the girl. The test of mind hadn't even been a problem for the Little Panther, as she had been experienced in that since she was an apprentice in shamanism and magic.  
  
And the last one, as the ultimate test of all four, which was the test of the hunt. This one was the test that was most important in the tradition of the clan since hunting was seen as an holy act even though Demona knew that this was, unlike Shaman, not seen so hard by all members of the clan. Since the clan could not fully rely on the human's resources, this was even more important and a gargoyle had to supply themselves when they wanted to survive.  
  
Since the whites had arrived and killed or expelled large parts of the game, this had become damned difficult and the game left in the woods had become cautious. But this was no real problem since Shaman guided the hunt.  
  
He had explained to her that since, even in the old days, it took normally days when even the best hunters could not find any game in the woods, the clan did not want to let the youngster wander through the woods for nights. So it was common that the Shaman of the clan called the animals who were willing to give their life and who stood in this area so that the youngster could hunt them.  
  
This didn't let the game become tamed or less willing to defend their life with everything they had and it still made the hunt a test for the younglings who wanted to ascend to full members of the clan.  
  
Demona looked to her mate who had become older... now she could see it on the fact that his feathers had become mostly gray.  
  
He was still fit and every time she saw him and looked into his eyes, she felt a crinkle on her skin by the love she felt for him. But she couldn't oversee the signs of time like the fact that he now glided slower than back then.  
  
"My love?" Shaman asked her, noticing the absence expression on her face.  
  
She looked on him with a nearly guilty expression.  
  
"Sorry, I was distracted." Demona admitted.  
  
Shaman shook his head and replied. "No reason to be sorry. She will be just out there for one hour. Our daughter will need some more time to track down her wild. So her elders can be still distracted."  
  
Demona nodded with a smile. He often called the girl his daughter, like all children of the clan were, but when they were alone together it had another meaning.  
  
"The years have passed," Shaman said "haven't they?"  
  
Demona nodded. "Yes the younglings ascend," she admitted, "and they will surely be fine warriors. The eggs... "  
  
"Yes, but that isn't what I meant," he interrupted her "and you know it my mate."  
  
Demona swallowed while looking into his deep brown eyes that seemed to know her soul like nobody had before.  
  
"The years haven't changed what I feel for you." She explained. "They have just increased my love."  
  
Shaman smiled over his beak and embraced his mate softly, stroking her fiery red hair while she softly stroked the gray feathers around the back of his head.  
  
"Listen my love, I know it is hard for you." Shaman said softly. "But you have to be realistic. I won't be clan leader forever."  
  
"Nonsense," Demona explained, looking deep in his eyes. "You're still the best of all possible clan leaders, nobody doubts on this in the clan."  
  
"My reflexes have become slow," Shaman replied, "and my senses aren't what they were once. You are younger, stronger... "  
  
"Your age brings wisdom," Demona interrupted, "and the clan needs this wisdom."  
  
A part of Demona winced by this, as these were nearly the same words with which Goliath had defended the white bearded leader in 984AD. She had now unconsciously used them to defend her mate... but they still weren't convincing for her, as much as she wished they were.  
  
Shaman had hatched in the year 1558. That made him now 114 years old, which was 57 in Gargoyle age, as old as the Old Soldier had been.  
  
"Then you have to lead the clan." Shaman said with a smile. "Since you are the oldest gargoyle I have ever met."  
  
Demona plucked one of Shaman's feathers off from his head, on which he made a short grimace of acted pain and his mate saw the playful expression in his eyes. Yes his body was old, but his spirit was still as young as it had been when she had first met him and in his arms she felt young too despite the fact that she was over 600 years old and felt sometimes millenniums older.  
  
"Are there any allusions?" She asked playfully, in a voice she would never allow herself in front of the clan.  
  
Shaman smiled and stroked a curl of her hair, which seemed to burn in the silver light of the moon, out of her beautiful face where green eyes sparkled like stars... Oh how he loved her.  
  
"No." He answered softly. "Every time I see you I can't imagine a gargoyle more beautiful than you... and even not a better successor."  
  
Demona sighed. A part of her refused to speak about such, but she knew she had to, as it was her duty.  
  
"I know you're worried about the humans." He said, as if he had read her thoughts and when his mate nodded he added. "As am I. Ever since that preacher arrived five years ago, I see more hostility in the eyes of the humans than before."  
  
"I eavesdropped what he prayed in the church one night." Demona explained. "It is the same stuff I hear the humans murmuring when they think I can't hear them."  
  
"Still the humans need us." Shaman said. "They nod when the preacher calls us demons, but afterwards they seek our help when they have problems. The humans here are more opportune with the choice of their help than their prayers like it."  
  
"Yes there has been this incident last year," Shaman admitted and did not notice how his mate's face darkened. "but these were outsiders, people who have simply come here, heard from us and tried to kill us when we slept even when the humans in the town warned them."  
  
"They say so." Demona said calmly, she did not want to show how much it had really hid her then. To wake up and see this dead and at the same time badly injured humans around her... it took her the illusion she had allowed herself to be completely save.  
  
"The people in the town have learned to live with us and a few really tolerate us." Shaman said "You know whom I mean."  
  
Demona nodded, there was this little, 12 year old boy she had saved 13 years ago, in a cold winter when a snow storm had broke loose and the humans in the town couldn't find him. Finally they had started the fire and asked the gargoyles for help.  
  
It had been a really bad storm even for a gargoyle and Shaman had less hope to find the boy, but Demona searched the woods for hours with the help of her guardian spirit and finally discovered the boy in a cave, he had suffered at hypothermia but else he had been well.  
  
Since this time the boy and his family had been more than grateful for Demona. The child, Michael, had called her even his guardian angel, something Demona had been able to talk it out of him, but since this time adored her, a fact which had not change when he had grown to a young man.  
  
"And the ones who really hate us simply don't move here," Shaman continued "as this area has a bad fame by the humans in the whole region."  
  
"Something I ever feared." Demona admitted.  
  
"The Hunters?" Shaman asked.  
  
Demona nodded, her face now troubled with worry and a slight anger.  
  
He had heard enough from his mate about them to share her attitude against them, but not her fear.  
  
"My love." He said softly, holding her claws. "You said yourself that they haven't bothered you for nearly a century now, so perhaps they have ended the hunt."  
  
Demona smiled sarcastically and replied. "No. The hunt goes on from generation to generation. They will never stop it and we have peace just because they haven't discovered me here yet. When they do... "  
  
"When they do we will face them." Shaman said and took her chin in his claw so that she looked directly into his eyes. "Together, as clan and as mates."  
  
Demona smiled now.  
  
"You're right. Who would dare to stand against us both." She asked him with full belief.  
  
"Yes," he said softly, "but the clan has to be represented by someone more... impressive."  
  
"You're impressive." Demona noted.  
  
"Aye but you are fearsome." Shaman explained. "My love, you already make the ritual every time it is needed. The humans see this."  
  
"You know there has to be other reasons." Demona replied. "I regain my life power endless unlike you or any other gargoyle."  
  
Shaman nodded. "Yes this is a gift precious if used in the right way."  
  
~But I would abandon it for just a night more with you~ Demona thought, knowing all too well that her *gift* was even so a curse.  
  
"My love you...." But before she could say anymore, a rustle in the trees some meters away from them surprised Demona.  
  
At once the mates laid their eyes on this place and they had problems to abandon the surprise of their faces when a gargoyle landed under the tree with a huge animal on her back.  
  
It was Little Panther who now studied her teacher and her clan leader with an unreadable expression. She was beautiful in the light of the moon like her mother and like this, she had dressed herself for this special occasion after the merits of the clan. Feathers that were partly black like her own hair, partly brown and in different other colors were bound in her mane and around her arms. Her face like some other parts of her body had been painted in the colors of red, which stood for the blood, the life of both herself and the prey. White, standing for the world of limbo and brown standing for the earth and showed her even wilder than before.  
  
"Leader! Teacher! I have finished my hunt." She explained with pride in her voice.  
  
Shaman was the first who took the spirit to say something.  
  
"Then show us your prey so that we may see if it is worthy as a gift for the clan." Shaman said and the young gargoyle nodded.  
  
She dropped the dead animal from her shoulders and Demona saw that it was a boar, in whose sides had been punctured with two large holes that surely came from the bloody spear, which was the weapon used for the hunt and now lay in the younglings claw. At the same time Demona noticed that the throat of the boar had been opened, seemingly during the fight since the boar was a large one indeed, not just for a young gargoyle. It must have been damned hard for Little Panther. Demona saw that this hunt hadn't been that easy after all since on the left upper arm of the youngling, there was a large wound going up the whole length of the arm. It had apparently already been cleaned by the youngling already and some bruises showed themselves on the beautiful skin.  
  
"What do you say second?" Shaman asked his mate. "Is this prey worthy?"  
  
Demona nodded. "Indeed it is." She said. "It is more than double the flesh, which is required. Her wounds prove that she has fought hard to get it for the clan and so she proves to have the spirit of a warrior."  
  
She stopped a second when she saw how the young wannabe warrior's breast rose in praise before adding. "But the dramatic scene you made here is less proof of your maturity than showing-off, which I expect from a hatchling and not by one of your generation. Especially not in the ascending to a full grown member of the clan." Demona saw with satisfaction how the youngling tried to hide a wince, not very successfully, by this. "This is nothing that will stop you from ascending, but something I don't want to see again from you. Clear?"  
  
"Yes teacher." Little Panther who seemed to be a bit smaller at this moment said. "I promise I will better myself."  
  
"I hope so." Demona explained. "For now, bring the boar to the plain and let an elder see to your wound after you send your next sibling to come here."  
  
Little Panther wanted to say that she had already took care for this, but a look in the second's eyes showed her that this was definitely not a good idea. So she simply nodded to her and the leader and went off with the dead boar on her back and the spear in her hand.  
  
When she was out of reach for her ears, Shaman started.  
  
"My love was this necessary?" He asked with a slight frown.  
  
"Oh yes." Demona retorted. "This girl has definitely gone too far. I mean who knows how long she lingered already in the tree?"  
  
"Well that was nothing we should be ashamed of?" Shaman said.  
  
"No," Demona explained eagerly, "but I don't want any of the clan eavesdropping and then her showing-off."  
  
"Well the girl is trying to impress us." Shaman said. "Or should I better say you?"  
  
Demona ignored this. "As teacher I have said more than often enough that they haven't to impress me, but to follow my orders." Demona explained. "She could have wounded herself through this!"  
  
"Sure your worried about your child but..." Shaman started, but was interrupted by Demona.  
  
"I am worried about all children of the clan." Demona said. "And I don't want that they bring themselves in danger without reason."  
  
Shaman nodded. "I know and this makes you a good teacher, but I have faith in them." He replied and softly took her chin in his claw. "You have made good warriors out of all of them."  
  
Demona smiled slightly by this praise. "I've. " She stopped short when memories of her own warrior training floated in her mind "learned by a good teacher... the best."  
  
Both gargoyles looked in each other's eyes and then embraced each other.  
  
09.08.98; 01:14; Castle Wyvern, Great Hall:  
  
Unnoticed by the rest of the clan Deborah blinked in wonder. Had she truly heard this? Had Demona called her the best teacher?  
  
~This can't be. ~ Deborah assured herself. ~She wouldn't say so, even back then and surely not after what had happened. ~  
  
But then she saw on Demona's face and in her eyes that they were absence. Her conscience was 300 years in the past since she was bound by her own story. Even when she wouldn't give her a friendly word here, not that Deborah was interested in such, her old pupil was definitely too much sunk in her thoughts to lie and unconsciously, she may have had told the truth.  
  
This shocked Deborah more than a bit... but then she thought of something other.  
  
~What if she meant the Archmage? ~  
  
This gave her a numb feeling in the stomach, but she was definitely not going to ask her... She didn't want it to seem as if she would care what Demona thought of her.  
  
She didn't.  
  
02.08.1672; 23:14; The plane of the clan:  
  
The clan had gathered around the large fire made before the cave. All looked now on the seven younglings standing in front of the fire, on which opposite the leader and his second stood.  
  
"Tonight the clan will welcome these younglings as warriors in its middle." Shaman intoned and looked around his clan. "We have seen these younglings work hard to prove their worthiness in our eyes and we've seen them grow for this year by year."  
  
Shaman looked from one youngling to another. "And every one of you have made us proud in the past years like in the past nights." With this he threw some leaves in the fire on which the fire enlarged and took a blue color. "Now come and take your price."  
  
With this the first youngling, Wolf, came to Shaman who had took the ceremonial dagger out of his belt.  
  
"Swear you to protect the clan with your life?" He asked. "To protect the protectorate. To honor the ancestors and the merits of the clan?"  
  
"I swear." Wolf said with pride.  
  
"Then show your willingness through your sacrifice." Shaman demanded.  
  
As the ritual demanded, Wolf gave his clan leader his right claw who held it in his own claw and Shaman slowly drove the blade of the dagger through the palm of the youngling's claw, which at once filled with blood.  
  
Demona, knowing her duties as second, held an age old wooden bowl decorated with beautiful carved gargoyles under the claw of the youngling until it was full of blood.  
  
"You gave your blood and the clan accepts it." Shaman said and nodded to his second who poured the blood into the fire.  
  
On this a solemn of fire rose and a wolf, the guardian spirit of the youngling, came in a shell of sparkles out of the fire and stood beside him.  
  
"With this your gift is accepted by the clan and by the spirits." Shaman declared. "You're now a full member of the clan."  
  
With this, Wolf slammed his bleeding fist against his breast and bowed shortly before Shaman, before he went back to his siblings followed by his guardian spirit.  
  
The next was Little Panther and so it went on until all younglings had become warriors and adults in the eyes of the clan with their guardian spirits at their side.  
  
"Now a new generation of warriors stand amongst us." Shaman explained. "This is a moment of pride for the whole clan alike and. " With this, his beaked formed into a smile. ". A time of celebration so let us start to honor them!"  
  
With this, some elders started to beat the drum to make music while one elder from the ones who had escaped from the German countries played a flute that she had taken with her. Through this were played old hymns from both the original part of the clan and even so by the newcomers who had since years been apart of it and had so practically created a new clan.  
  
On this happy chatter started and the newly ascended warriors were surrounded and praised by the whole clan. Meanwhile the hatchlings of the last rookery, whose ascending to younglings was still years ahead, happily danced around the fire, more or less in the music's rhythm.  
  
And the clan's second, at this moment, looked around it and smiled. It was a special moment when the young generation ascended to warriors, in each clan. She wished she would have seen the hatchlings... her hatchlings of her first and second clan ascend... if just to reach the adulthood before the warrior training and not just die as eggs or killed as hatchlings by the human's hand. When she had spoken to Shaman about this he had found this as a strange merit to let the hatchlings become adults 19 years after they had hatched and so were just 9 by human terms.  
  
Demona meanwhile had found it strange for the first time that the hatchlings first became younglings before ascending to warriors and so full members of the clan. As younglings they had the right to take part in clan councils but weren't allowed to vote or to explain their thoughts. So they became simple witness of the clan affairs and learned on this way the attitude of adult clan members.  
  
They even specialised themselves somewhat by hanging around with special elders who taught them their skills like making music with the flute, to hunt, to create tools or to learn the art of healing as far as it was possible without being a shaman. Basic skills in these arts were taught to everyone since they were crucial for their surviving, but in the years as younglings the most orientated special in some arts... like shamanism.  
  
Demona saw this late ascending critically since she had good experiences with growing up fast through becoming an adult in those young years, but she understood why the clan's merit here were different from the ones back in Scotland. As isolated as they were in this country, for a long time they hadn't needed being warriors even when this part of living had always been part of them. Since the land wasn't rough, the game numerous and since they had peaceful and loyal human allies (even when Demona still couldn't believe that it gave such), they had never needed to become adults fast.  
  
Whereas in Scotland the land was rough as it had to be considering the clans who lived there... had lived there. Then there were the constant attacks of muggers, the Vikings and later the English, there was no time for a long childhood since the clans needed everyone.  
  
But in Japan there were... but this was again too far away, the present counted.  
  
Demona looked how her daughter embraced Wolf, longer than it was usual between simple siblings and smiled  
  
~Home. ~  
  
09.08.98; 01:21; Castle Wyvern, Great Hall:  
  
Demona sighed, shortly closing her eyes.  
  
"Never since the fall of Moray had I been so happy." Demona admitted with closed eyes and was silent for some seconds, as if she tried to remember those nights.  
  
Most members of the clan just looked on her and they realized deep down that 1000 years hadn't just been an amount of time, but a life.  
  
The elders who had briefly lost the hatchlings that they were supposed to be watching and had noticed the absence of their children herded out the group of hatchlings, that had been secretly listening, to the rest of their siblings.  
  
Finally, Asrial who had listened to the story of her sister with such great interest that she seemingly forgot to think about new inventions or articles in the *Science*, rose her voice.  
  
"What happened then sister? Why was she named Lucifia and not known as Little Panther like she was back then?" Asrial asked, nearly shy. "And if your daughter was a normal gargoyle back then, what made her to the monster we have seen and fought?"  
  
"The humans." Demona growled out with such hate and contempt that it made a part of Asrial and the other gargoyles shudder.  
  
To be continued..... 


	3. Death

****

02.08.1672; 02:35; On an open place in the wood, far away from the town:

Demona stood aside her mate and looked at the deep forest before her. It was the time of ascending in their clan like Demona had made it with her own rookery. 

In her new clan, ascending was much the same as it had been in her old clan, which surprised Demona since there were many differences between Scottish and Indian clans. There were tests to see the art of gliding when the youngsters had to glide a special route in time, the art of fighting where the youngsters had to fight against an elder in order to prove their fighting skills. Then there was the test of mind, where the skills of the youngsters' spirits were tested.

The special youngster, who they were waiting for, hadn't passed the first test so well like Demona had guessed she would and it had shown that she would never be the best or fastest glider in the clan. In the art of fighting though she had been the best and had even been able to defeat the elder she had to battle since he had underestimated the girl. The test of mind hadn't even been a problem for the Little Panther, as she had been experienced in that since she was an apprentice in shamanism and magic. 

And the last one, as the ultimate test of all four, which was the test of the hunt. This one was the test that was most important in the tradition of the clan since hunting was seen as an holy act even though Demona knew that this was, unlike Shaman, not seen so hard by all members of the clan. Since the clan could not fully rely on the human's resources, this was even more important and a gargoyle had to supply themselves when they wanted to survive.

Since the whites had arrived and killed or expelled large parts of the game, this had become damned difficult and the game left in the woods had become cautious. But this was no real problem since Shaman guided the hunt. 

He had explained to her that since, even in the old days, it took normally days when even the best hunters could not find any game in the woods, the clan did not want to let the youngster wander through the woods for nights. So it was common that the Shaman of the clan called the animals who were willing to give their life and who stood in this area so that the youngster could hunt them. 

This didn't let the game become tamed or less willing to defend their life with everything they had and it still made the hunt a test for the younglings who wanted to ascend to full members of the clan. 

Demona looked to her mate who had become older... now she could see it on the fact that his feathers had become mostly gray.

He was still fit and every time she saw him and looked into his eyes, she felt a crinkle on her skin by the love she felt for him. But she couldn't oversee the signs of time like the fact that he now glided slower than back then.

"My love?" Shaman asked her, noticing the absence expression on her face. 

She looked on him with a nearly guilty expression. 

"Sorry, I was distracted." Demona admitted.

Shaman shook his head and replied. "No reason to be sorry. She will be just out there for one hour. Our daughter will need some more time to track down her wild. So her elders can be still distracted." 

Demona nodded with a smile. He often called the girl his daughter, like all children of the clan were, but when they were alone together it had another meaning. 

"The years have passed," Shaman said "haven't they?" 

Demona nodded. "Yes the younglings ascend," she admitted, "and they will surely be fine warriors. The eggs... "

"Yes, but that isn't what I meant," he interrupted her "and you know it my mate."

Demona swallowed while looking into his deep brown eyes that seemed to know her soul like nobody had before.

"The years haven't changed what I feel for you." She explained. "They have just increased my love."

Shaman smiled over his beak and embraced his mate softly, stroking her fiery red hair while she softly stroked the gray feathers around the back of his head.

"Listen my love, I know it is hard for you." Shaman said softly. "But you have to be realistic. I won't be clan leader forever."

"Nonsense," Demona explained, looking deep in his eyes. "You're still the best of all possible clan leaders, nobody doubts on this in the clan."

"My reflexes have become slow," Shaman replied, "and my senses aren't what they were once. You are younger, stronger... " 

"Your age brings wisdom," Demona interrupted, "and the clan needs this wisdom."

A part of Demona winced by this, as these were nearly the same words with which Goliath had defended the white bearded leader in 984AD. She had now unconsciously used them to defend her mate... but they still weren't convincing for her, as much as she wished they were. 

Shaman had hatched in the year 1558. That made him now 114 years old, which was 57 in Gargoyle age, as old as the Old Soldier had been.

"Then you have to lead the clan." Shaman said with a smile. "Since you are the oldest gargoyle I have ever met."

Demona plucked one of Shaman's feathers off from his head, on which he made a short grimace of acted pain and his mate saw the playful expression in his eyes. Yes his body was old, but his spirit was still as young as it had been when she had first met him and in his arms she felt young too despite the fact that she was over 600 years old and felt sometimes millenniums older.

"Are there any allusions?" She asked playfully, in a voice she would never allow herself in front of the clan.

Shaman smiled and stroked a curl of her hair, which seemed to burn in the silver light of the moon, out of her beautiful face where green eyes sparkled like stars... Oh how he loved her.

"No." He answered softly. "Every time I see you I can't imagine a gargoyle more beautiful than you... and even not a better successor."

Demona sighed. A part of her refused to speak about such, but she knew she had to, as it was her duty.

"I know you're worried about the humans." He said, as if he had read her thoughts and when his mate nodded he added. "As am I. Ever since that preacher arrived five years ago, I see more hostility in the eyes of the humans than before."

"I eavesdropped what he prayed in the church one night." Demona explained. "It is the same stuff I hear the humans murmuring when they think I can't hear them." 

"Still the humans need us." Shaman said. "They nod when the preacher calls us demons, but afterwards they seek our help when they have problems. The humans here are more opportune with the choice of their help than their prayers like it." 

"Yes there has been this incident last year," Shaman admitted and did not notice how his mate's face darkened. "but these were outsiders, people who have simply come here, heard from us and tried to kill us when we slept even when the humans in the town warned them."

"They say so." Demona said calmly, she did not want to show how much it had really hid her then. To wake up and see this dead and at the same time badly injured humans around her... it took her the illusion she had allowed herself to be completely save.

"The people in the town have learned to live with us and a few really tolerate us." Shaman said "You know whom I mean."

Demona nodded, there was this little, 12 year old boy she had saved 13 years ago, in a cold winter when a snow storm had broke loose and the humans in the town couldn't find him. Finally they had started the fire and asked the gargoyles for help.

It had been a really bad storm even for a gargoyle and Shaman had less hope to find the boy, but Demona searched the woods for hours with the help of her guardian spirit and finally discovered the boy in a cave, he had suffered at hypothermia but else he had been well. 

Since this time the boy and his family had been more than grateful for Demona. The child, Michael, had called her even his guardian angel, something Demona had been able to talk it out of him, but since this time adored her, a fact which had not change when he had grown to a young man.

"And the ones who really hate us simply don't move here," Shaman continued "as this area has a bad fame by the humans in the whole region."

"Something I ever feared." Demona admitted.

"The Hunters?" Shaman asked. 

Demona nodded, her face now troubled with worry and a slight anger.

He had heard enough from his mate about them to share her attitude against them, but not her fear.

"My love." He said softly, holding her claws. "You said yourself that they haven't bothered you for nearly a century now, so perhaps they have ended the hunt." 

Demona smiled sarcastically and replied. "No. The hunt goes on from generation to generation. They will never stop it and we have peace just because they haven't discovered me here yet. When they do... "

"When they do we will face them." Shaman said and took her chin in his claw so that she looked directly into his eyes. "Together, as clan and as mates."

Demona smiled now. 

"You're right. Who would dare to stand against us both." She asked him with full belief. 

"Yes," he said softly, "but the clan has to be represented by someone more... impressive."

"You're impressive." Demona noted.

"Aye but you are fearsome." Shaman explained. "My love, you already make the ritual every time it is needed. The humans see this."

"You know there has to be other reasons." Demona replied. "I regain my life power endless unlike you or any other gargoyle."

Shaman nodded. "Yes this is a gift precious if used in the right way." 

~But I would abandon it for just a night more with you~ Demona thought, knowing all too well that her *gift* was even so a curse.

"My love you...." But before she could say anymore, a rustle in the trees some meters away from them surprised Demona.

At once the mates laid their eyes on this place and they had problems to abandon the surprise of their faces when a gargoyle landed under the tree with a huge animal on her back.

It was Little Panther who now studied her teacher and her clan leader with an unreadable expression. She was beautiful in the light of the moon like her mother and like this, she had dressed herself for this special occasion after the merits of the clan. Feathers that were partly black like her own hair, partly brown and in different other colors were bound in her mane and around her arms. Her face like some other parts of her body had been painted in the colors of red, which stood for the blood, the life of both herself and the prey. White, standing for the world of limbo and brown standing for the earth and showed her even wilder than before.

"Leader! Teacher! I have finished my hunt." She explained with pride in her voice. 

Shaman was the first who took the spirit to say something.

"Then show us your prey so that we may see if it is worthy as a gift for the clan." Shaman said and the young gargoyle nodded.

She dropped the dead animal from her shoulders and Demona saw that it was a boar, in whose sides had been punctured with two large holes that surely came from the bloody spear, which was the weapon used for the hunt and now lay in the younglings claw. At the same time Demona noticed that the throat of the boar had been opened, seemingly during the fight since the boar was a large one indeed, not just for a young gargoyle. It must have been damned hard for Little Panther. Demona saw that this hunt hadn't been that easy after all since on the left upper arm of the youngling, there was a large wound going up the whole length of the arm. It had apparently already been cleaned by the youngling already and some bruises showed themselves on the beautiful skin.

"What do you say second?" Shaman asked his mate. "Is this prey worthy?"

Demona nodded. "Indeed it is." She said. "It is more than double the flesh, which is required. Her wounds prove that she has fought hard to get it for the clan and so she proves to have the spirit of a warrior."

She stopped a second when she saw how the young wannabe warrior's breast rose in praise before adding. "But the dramatic scene you made here is less proof of your maturity than showing-off, which I expect from a hatchling and not by one of your generation. Especially not in the ascending to a full grown member of the clan." Demona saw with satisfaction how the youngling tried to hide a wince, not very successfully, by this. "This is nothing that will stop you from ascending, but something I don't want to see again from you. Clear?" 

"Yes teacher." Little Panther who seemed to be a bit smaller at this moment said. "I promise I will better myself."

"I hope so." Demona explained. "For now, bring the boar to the plain and let an elder see to your wound after you send your next sibling to come here."

Little Panther wanted to say that she had already took care for this, but a look in the second's eyes showed her that this was definitely not a good idea. So she simply nodded to her and the leader and went off with the dead boar on her back and the spear in her hand.

When she was out of reach for her ears, Shaman started.

"My love was this necessary?" He asked with a slight frown.

"Oh yes." Demona retorted. "This girl has definitely gone too far. I mean who knows how long she lingered already in the tree?" 

"Well that was nothing we should be ashamed of?" Shaman said.

"No," Demona explained eagerly, "but I don't want any of the clan eavesdropping and then her showing-off."

"Well the girl is trying to impress us." Shaman said. "Or should I better say _you_?" 

Demona ignored this. "As teacher I have said more than often enough that they haven't to impress me, but to follow my orders." Demona explained. "She could have wounded herself through this!" 

"Sure your worried about your child but..." Shaman started, but was interrupted by Demona. 

"I am worried about all children of the clan." Demona said. "And I don't want that they bring themselves in danger without reason."

Shaman nodded. "I know and this makes you a good teacher, but I have faith in them." He replied and softly took her chin in his claw. "You have made good warriors out of all of them."

Demona smiled slightly by this praise. "I've… " She stopped short when memories of her own warrior training floated in her mind "learned by a good teacher... the best."

Both gargoyles looked in each other's eyes and then embraced each other.

****

09.08.98; 01:14; Castle Wyvern, Great Hall:

Unnoticed by the rest of the clan Deborah blinked in wonder. Had she truly heard this? Had Demona called her the best teacher?

~This can't be. ~ Deborah assured herself. ~She wouldn't say so, even back then and surely not after what had happened. ~ 

But then she saw on Demona's face and in her eyes that they were absence. Her conscience was 300 years in the past since she was bound by her own story. Even when she wouldn't give her a friendly word here, not that Deborah was interested in such, her old pupil was definitely too much sunk in her thoughts to lie and unconsciously, she may have had told the truth.

This shocked Deborah more than a bit... but then she thought of something other. 

~What if she meant the Archmage? ~

This gave her a numb feeling in the stomach, but she was definitely not going to ask her... She didn't want it to seem as if she would care what Demona thought of her.

She didn't. 

****

02.08.1672; 23:14; The plane of the clan:

The clan had gathered around the large fire made before the cave. All looked now on the seven younglings standing in front of the fire, on which opposite the leader and his second stood.

"Tonight the clan will welcome these younglings as warriors in its middle." Shaman intoned and looked around his clan. "We have seen these younglings work hard to prove their worthiness in our eyes and we've seen them grow for this year by year." 

Shaman looked from one youngling to another. "And every one of you have made us proud in the past years like in the past nights." With this he threw some leaves in the fire on which the fire enlarged and took a blue color. "Now come and take your price."

With this the first youngling, Wolf, came to Shaman who had took the ceremonial dagger out of his belt.

"Swear you to protect the clan with your life?" He asked. "To protect the protectorate. To honor the ancestors and the merits of the clan?" 

"I swear." Wolf said with pride.

"Then show your willingness through your sacrifice." Shaman demanded.

As the ritual demanded, Wolf gave his clan leader his right claw who held it in his own claw and Shaman slowly drove the blade of the dagger through the palm of the youngling's claw, which at once filled with blood. 

Demona, knowing her duties as second, held an age old wooden bowl decorated with beautiful carved gargoyles under the claw of the youngling until it was full of blood.

"You gave your blood and the clan accepts it." Shaman said and nodded to his second who poured the blood into the fire. 

On this a solemn of fire rose and a wolf, the guardian spirit of the youngling, came in a shell of sparkles out of the fire and stood beside him.

"With this your gift is accepted by the clan and by the spirits." Shaman declared. "You're now a full member of the clan." 

With this, Wolf slammed his bleeding fist against his breast and bowed shortly before Shaman, before he went back to his siblings followed by his guardian spirit.

The next was Little Panther and so it went on until all younglings had become warriors and adults in the eyes of the clan with their guardian spirits at their side.

"Now a new generation of warriors stand amongst us." Shaman explained. "This is a moment of pride for the whole clan alike and… " With this, his beaked formed into a smile. "… A time of celebration so let us start to honor them!" 

With this, some elders started to beat the drum to make music while one elder from the ones who had escaped from the German countries played a flute that she had taken with her. Through this were played old hymns from both the original part of the clan and even so by the newcomers who had since years been apart of it and had so practically created a new clan.

On this happy chatter started and the newly ascended warriors were surrounded and praised by the whole clan. Meanwhile the hatchlings of the last rookery, whose ascending to younglings was still years ahead, happily danced around the fire, more or less in the music's rhythm.

And the clan's second, at this moment, looked around it and smiled. It was a special moment when the young generation ascended to warriors, in each clan. She wished she would have seen the hatchlings... her hatchlings of her first and second clan ascend... if just to reach the adulthood before the warrior training and not just die as eggs or killed as hatchlings by the human's hand. When she had spoken to Shaman about this he had found this as a strange merit to let the hatchlings become adults 19 years after they had hatched and so were just 9 by human terms. 

Demona meanwhile had found it strange for the first time that the hatchlings first became younglings before ascending to warriors and so full members of the clan. As younglings they had the right to take part in clan councils but weren't allowed to vote or to explain their thoughts. So they became simple witness of the clan affairs and learned on this way the attitude of adult clan members. 

They even specialised themselves somewhat by hanging around with special elders who taught them their skills like making music with the flute, to hunt, to create tools or to learn the art of healing as far as it was possible without being a shaman. Basic skills in these arts were taught to everyone since they were crucial for their surviving, but in the years as younglings the most orientated special in some arts... like shamanism. 

Demona saw this late ascending critically since she had good experiences with growing up fast through becoming an adult in those young years, but she understood why the clan's merit here were different from the ones back in Scotland. As isolated as they were in this country, for a long time they hadn't needed being warriors even when this part of living had always been part of them. Since the land wasn't rough, the game numerous and since they had peaceful and loyal human allies (even when Demona still couldn't believe that it gave such), they had never needed to become adults fast. 

Whereas in Scotland the land was rough as it had to be considering the clans who lived there... had lived there. Then there were the constant attacks of muggers, the Vikings and later the English, there was no time for a long childhood since the clans needed everyone.

But in Japan there were... but this was again too far away, the present counted.

Demona looked how her daughter embraced Wolf, longer than it was usual between simple siblings and smiled

~Home. ~

****

09.08.98; 01:21; Castle Wyvern, Great Hall:

Demona sighed, shortly closing her eyes.

"Never since the fall of Moray had I been so happy." Demona admitted with closed eyes and was silent for some seconds, as if she tried to remember those nights. 

Most members of the clan just looked on her and they realized deep down that 1000 years hadn't just been an amount of time, but a life.

The elders who had briefly lost the hatchlings that they were supposed to be watching and had noticed the absence of their children herded out the group of hatchlings, that had been secretly listening, to the rest of their siblings.

Finally, Asrial who had listened to the story of her sister with such great interest that she seemingly forgot to think about new inventions or articles in the *Science*, rose her voice.

"What happened then sister? Why was she named Lucifia and not known as Little Panther like she was back then?" Asrial asked, nearly shy. "And if your daughter was a normal gargoyle back then, what made her to the monster we have seen and fought?"

"The humans." Demona growled out with such hate and contempt that it made a part of Asrial and the other gargoyles shudder.

****

08.06.1675; 21:02; The cave of the shaman:

"Please bring me the tear of Naliko." Shaman said. 

"Here." Demona answered and gave him the dried blossom. 

Shaman nodded and put the blossom in the mortar, on which he pulverized it with a beautiful carved stone. Carefully, not spilling a gram of the precious powder, he put it into a little bag and tied it up tightly. 

"This is it." Shaman pronounced. "Tonight we will mix the final components and make the ritual."

Demona nodded. She knew that from this night the ritual had to be made in three nights or they would have to do it again in the next year. If that happened then it would be much more difficult and dangerous to bind the spirit who guarded the plain anew than to simple anew its bound like she had seen it done by Shaman so many times before, besides they would be helpless by day like the other clans had been.

"My love." Shaman started while he put the bag on a shelf in the wand, a present from a thankful workman in the town. "I think you should perform the ritual this time."

Demona looked deep into her mate's eyes. Only the Shaman of the clan, the clan leader performed the ritual, and Demona knew what it meant when he asked her to do this. 

She studied him more and saw the pleading look in his eyes that were surrounded by feathers now completely gray... nearly white. 

She nodded and said, "I will. With you at my side."

They both knew that this meant more. It was a quiet agreement between the mates as well as the leader and his second. Soon this night, Shaman would declare Demona as the new leader of the clan and then she would perform the ritual to confirm this. Demona knew that her appointment wouldn't be doubted by any clan member since she was more than old enough and experienced in the art of shamanism to lead.

"Naturally you could choose one of the apprentices to be at your side." Shaman suggested. 

Demona shook her head. She had just gotten used to the fact that she would be the new leader of the clan. Choosing a second in command would be too much.

"It is still too early." Demona explained. "They are both still too young." 

"You told me once that your former love Goliath became second in command even in younger years." Shaman noticed.

Demona nodded. "Yes but those were under other circumstances." She explained. "It was definitely more dangerous and we were... more mature than our new warriors are today. Besides this, the leader was forced to choose a new second by the elders since it had been three years without one."

"This clan had to live even longer without a second." Shaman reminded her. "But it is not usual and since we have two promising choices then it would be strange if we were to take too long to choose one. Remember, the best way to mature is to have responsibility."

Demona nodded, as she had to agree with him on that.

"I will choose the second in the next months when the clan has gotten used to me as leader." Demona explained. "Even when I already know whom I choose."

Shaman looked at her surprised. "Whom?" 

"The lad." Demona answered simply. 

Shaman rose an eye-ridge, as he would have chosen the other.

"Why him and not Little Panther?" He asked.

"Little Panther is, in my eyes, too unsure." Demona explained. "She is back in her warrior lessons and the learning of magic and even her skills in the art of shamanism are a bit backward compared to her brother's. Often she is diverted during the training and she is much too less eager in this... she wouldn't make a good second."

There was a moment of silence in the cave as they listened to the sounds of the night outside the cave.

"Don't you think you are a bit too hard to her?" Shaman asked finally. "I mean, she has to learn three times as much as the others of her rookery are, even more than her favorite brother."

Demona sighed and finally nodded. 

"Yes and I really see how hard she works." She admitted. "Sure it is hard for her! To stay eager by so much work, by learning so much and having at the same time less time for her siblings." She swallowed when memories from her training with the Archmage came back, how less time she had had with her sibling's back then... and her daughter had even less time. "But I have told her what such an education means and she was willing for both, so she can't complain now that she has too much work."

Demona sat down and leaned back. "I really see how much she tries to get ready with so much work and I am damned proud of her...." She swallowed. "Damned proud, but even when I see the enormous potential… I have to choose the one as second who has the best skills now and not in potential." She smiled shortly. "But I am sure that she will become the second when I lay down the post as leader some day, she has all necessary qualities and when she is ready with her warrior training she will even have enough time to become better in her other subjects.... She will."

Shaman looked on his mate and nodded. 

"So be it." He agreed and added then with a smile. "But I think there is even another reason why she is a bit... distracted."

Demona nodded, "Yes I've seen it," she said, "they barely take their eyes of one another, but this is no reason to be distracted. As warriors, especially when they will be leader and second one day, they have to control themselves or they will make failures." 

"It is the first love my mate." Shaman defended them. "They will surely have problems to control their... passions. Who hasn't?"

"I know I know," Demona replied. "But a bit of self control isn't demanding too much is it? Especially of a coming shaman!"

Shaman hesitated but finally nodded. "I think you are right my love... again."

Demona smiled on this and embraced him tightly. "Aren't I ever?" 

"Well, I think for those you shall get something." He explained and embraced her with his still strong arms, softly stroking her hair when....

"Leader, Second..." A female voice came from the entrance of the cave.

"Seemingly we have to control our passions too." Shaman whispered in his love's ear. 

"Yes?" He asked, directed to the entrance.

They both turned to the entrance where a young female with the features of a Leopard stood. She was of Little Panther and Wolf's generation and Demona remembered that she had given her the duty to watch over the valley tonight.

"The fire down in the town has been stroked." The young gargess explained.

Demona sighed. ~Seemingly these humans have problems again. ~

"We will come." Shaman explained to the girl who nodded and went out of the cave. 

"I will gather the medicine and you will gather the apprentices," Shaman ordered. "They will be happy that they have time to practice their skills. We will met at the cliff to the town." 

Demona nodded. "I will my leader." She explained with a smile, remembering that this might be the last time that she called her mate so and went off.

She searched first in the middle of the camp, but did not find them there and when she asked the other clan members they had even so no idea where both young warriors were.

Demona already thought to go to her mate without both and give them a scolding later when it hit her and she went to the more secluded place of the plain. There grew soft grass and the plain gave a good panorama over the sheer endless woods, just lightened at some places where the humans had cut down trees. 

Together with the sight of the moons and the stars, which floated over everything. It was a lovely view. Such beauties that the pairs of the clan, mostly the young ones, had chosen it as the perfect place where not to be.... Disturbed.

And there she discovered them, both lying in the grass and softly embracing each other, seemingly unaware of the world around them.

~Great! ~ Demona thought angrily and with a jump she launched herself in front of the pair.

The second saw with satisfaction how both winced by being so rudely thrown out of their dream world and looked at her in total shock. 

"Stand up." Demona ordered the pair and they were both damned eager to follow this order.

"Second we just...." Wolf started, but Demona raised a hand and showed him to be quiet.

"I'm aware what you both were doing." She explained and held her view on both younglings' faces who seemed to become deep red by this. "You're both old enough so it isn't my business or anybody else's in the clan. But you have responsibilities in it and so it is of great importance to let at least one of the others know where you go." 

Her eyes stayed on both lovers and she remembered how she had first got into trouble when she was busy with her breastplate-wearing brother and they had forgotten their teaching lesson.

"The clan relies on you every night." Demona noted. "And this means you have to be ready every time! If you're not then you're worse than useless, especially in the position you seemingly wish to inhabit in the future."

By this Little Panther lowered her head a bit, but her teacher was too busy with instructing them to notice.

"We're sorry teacher." Wolf said. "We promise that it will never happen again."

Demona held her look on both younglings. Normally she wouldn't let them get away so easily, but they had no time.

"I hope so." She replied and noticed how the tension in the young warrior's bodies soaked. 

"Come, we have to glide to the other end of the plain." Demona explained to them. "Our leader waits there because of you and if you don't want to let him wait longer then you'd better hurry."

"The humans need us?" Wolf asked his second, despite the great possibility to get scolded for this again. 

Demona who had neared to border of the plain, nodded. She was going to leap from it since the fastest way would be gliding through the air.

"We think so." She replied. "We don't know anymore except that the fire in the town has been stroked on... One of your siblings who took her duties seriously informed us. All further we will acknowledge in the town."

Both young warriors nodded and followed their second up into the sky.

They glided fast, even when Demona believed to hear the pair whispering behind her tail, but she had no time to admonish them anew and in short time they were at the other border of the plain where Shaman waited on them. 

Shaman did not wait for them to land but leaped himself from the plain and let the warm winds take him to his mate's side

Wordless they glided to the middle of the town where the fire had been set, seemingly by one child who sat there now seemingly waiting on them.

Demona's good eyes recognized him. He was one of Michael's children, his eight-year-old son. She could see from his red eyes that he had to have shed tears and his eyes now were in sheer panic. 

"Why have you called us?" Shaman asked calmly in a reassuring voice that she knew of him when he once had calmed a little hatchling of a bad daydream. "And why not one of your parents?"

"My sister has got fever." The boy said in a timid voice. "Father and mother wanted me to stay by her, she..." the last words went off in large sobbing and Demona saw that he was near a breakdown.

Shaman nodded, trying not to further burden the boy. "Go ahead."

The child nodded unsure and went ahead in the direction of Michael's house. 

Demona hid her feelings well since she didn't want to let her worry about Michael's daughter be known to the child or even her mate even when she thought that he knew it anyway. She couldn't believe it herself that she cared for the girl, but it hadn't feared Demona. Every time when she visited the town to take the corn or other goods the humans gave them, the girl like her brother was there and looked on her in wonder. In a way she hadn't believed it herself to be possible that she had become fond of Michael and his family, but she had.

Her respect for Michael grew even more when she heard from him that he did not go in the church any more since the preacher had come to the town. A fact, which had made him and his family unloved by the rest of the town so that Michael had finally decided to move more outward of the town and deep into the wood so as not to be the goal of the common disapproval anymore. 

This had just enlarged the feeling of mistrust that the other humans had for him and his family. Michael had told her what he had eavesdropped from the people speaking behind his back about wild orgies he would celebrate with the gargoyles, especially with her. The thought of mating with a human was, for Demona, more than ridiculous but when she heard from Michael that the other children were avoiding his children, she had gotten angry. 

~Why have the humans even to expel their own kind when they are friends...~ Demona shuddered by these words. Did she really consider Michael and his family as friends of the clan? 

She remembered the captain of the guard, he was even isolated amongst the humans because he respected her and her kind...

But her thoughts were interrupted when the path in the wood became straight and she could see Michael's house barely fifty feet away. The boy started to run to the door and at once the door opened and Michael came out, taking the boy in his strong arms while the boy buried his face in his father's chest. 

On this Demona stopped, sensing something strange there. Why did Michael come out now as if he had waited in the floor, shouldn't he be with his girl? And why didn't he greeted them, or asked them to hurry? 

~Maybe we came too late. ~ Demona thought bitterly and a pain crossed her heart when she thought of the innocent girl, even though she would never admit it. 

She looked at Michael's eyes. At first she saw the pain and believed she had really come too late, but then... 

She saw more than pain. She saw fear, the same fear as in his son's eyes, fear and... regret.

Demona's eyes widened when she began to understand and adrenaline started to rush through her veins. 

"My love!" She cried to Shaman and he turned surprised half around to her when something hit him in his chest and he stumbled backwards in his mate's arms.

  
She grabbed him around his chest, felt the warm liquid in her claws and smelled the taste of blood... 

Full of rage at the one, who had dared to do this, she looked around and saw that at least 6-armed humans, all of them wearing black masks, surrounded them. But they didn't matter for her as much as the person in front of her, the leader of the group wearing a mask with three deep red scars on it and a smoking gun in his hand.

"Hunter..." Demona whispered, her mind nearly refusing to believe what was happening.

"Demon!" The Hunter replied, full with contempt. "You didn't really think that the hunt would have ended?"

Demona glared at him, her eyes blazing red and saw that on this some men stepped back... seemingly knowing who she was. She heard Little Panther and Wolf coming to her by stepping backwards and never leaving the humans, which surrounded them out of their views like their teacher had taught them.

"My love, can you run when I order to?" Demona asked her mate in the language of their clan. "Through the left part where the men have already stepped back. We will scare them with screams and try to overrun them. I will hold them back and you run as fast as you can."

"I'll try." Shaman said, again in their language, under pains while more and more of his blood spilled from his wound.

"On my sign." She said to the young warriors behind her.

"You think that these words in your unholy language can impress me?" The Hunter asked and took the sword from his belt "You...."

"NOW!!!" 

At once the four gargoyles started a wild screaming, which shook the men in their bones and ran to the two men. Demona leaped on them with a battle cry, hitting one men with her tail on the face and letting him collapse while pinning the other on the ground and slashing his chest open, ignoring his screams of pain. 

She felt how the other gargoyles rushed around her and hoped that the humans would be shocked enough to not follow them yet. To make sure that her point had been made, she spread her wings to their full seize to block the way for the humans. 

Unfortunately the Hunter wasn't impressed and cut with his sword good two thirds of Demona's left wing of, which made her scream in pain and rage.

"You see men, the Demon is made out of unholy flesh and blood." The Hunter said proudly to his men. "So we can kill her."

Demona stood now in front of the Hunter and his men, trying to ignore the phantom pain of her wing and the view of the lost part on the ground, lying there like dead skin. She knew that it would grow again, but it hurt...

The men came slowly closer and Demona knew that she couldn't do anything against such superiority and so decided to turn around and followed the others on all fours, on which way she was faster than any human could be.

So fast she left that the humans behind were left running through the undergrowth and following the direction she supposed the others had taken. Far too soon for her taste, she discovered them in front of her running, but far too slow.

"What is it?" Demona asked angrily "We've got to hurry!" 

She discovered the answer even before they could answer her. Shaman was seemingly at the end of his powers, his chest rising and sinking damned slowly and he could barely hold himself on his knees. 

  
"My love." Demona said in shock. She had seen that his wound had been deep, but now she saw that it was more than that. It was deadly if not at once cured through a shaman.

But before she could grab the bag on her belt, her keen ears sensed the humans coming nearer fast. 

~Damn. ~ 

"You have to leave me behind..." Shaman coughed. "I just hinder you..." 

"Never!" Demona said angrily. "We...." 

Then she heard a snarl, not unlike a gargoyle's snarl and looked ahead to see a big black cat standing on a fallen tree and mustering her with deep green eyes. A panther... her panther!

She looked down on her love. 

"Can you run?" She asked worriedly and he shook his head.

On this she took him in her two powerful arms like she had done so many years before and followed the panther that had started to run away, with the gargoyles on its back.

The gargoyles, especially Demona with Shaman in her arms, had problems to follow the panther, but finally the panther leaped about a small overhang and then under it. Demona followed the panther and discovered a cave under the overhang, which was covered by roots. 

"Quickly!" She ordered to the young warriors who instantly followed the panther in. Then Demona crawled in with her mate in her arms. She wasn't surprised that the cave had no other exit but the panther had vanished, as this was the nature of guardian spirits, they came to protect and vanished then...

And this time her ghost had indeed saved them.

Demona looked to his mate and knew that the ghost hadn't saved everyone.

"My love!" She whispered to Shaman who lay weak on the ground. "Hold on, I..."

"No, it's too late." Shaman coughed and as much as she prayed, she knew he was right. The shot must have not just hit a vein but a lung, too. Desperately she put her claws on his wound in order to stop it from bleeding, but she knew she couldn't help him anymore. All she had learned from him in the art of medicine and shamanism said this to her.

"My wonderful, wonderful mate..." Shaman said until his coughing again stopped it. He then said slowly. "You are so beautiful as when we first met..."

"I..." Demona said, tears running down her face. "I remember my love, I remember."

"I came in this cave and I saw you..." Shaman said, his voice becoming weaker and weaker. "Injured... dangerous... and so wild."

Shaman smiled despite his pains over his whole beak.

"I loved you from the first time..." He coughed again. "The first time I saw you... your eyes...."

He sunk back on the earth and closed his eyes for the last time.

Demona could just stare at her death mate, softly stroking his gray feathers. She heard sobbing from behind but chose to ignore it.

It was an irony par excellence that it ended here, in a cave such as the one where they had met first, as refuges of the humans who hunted her. Just this time he was wounded and she hadn't been able to help him.

Memories flooded her mind...

*"I'm a friend."*

*A mild summer night, she and Shaman were surrounded by the other clan members but they had just eyes for another. Shaman raised the ceremonial dagger and cut the palm of his claw, he then gave it to Demona and she cut the palm of her claw. Finally she gave the dagger to the eldest, an old male and grabbed Shaman's bloody claw with hers. "Like the blood, which you gave to show your loyalty to the clan," he intoned, "you gave your blood to show that you're one for another and in the eyes of the clan..." He took the dagger on his belt and laid a claw on each gargoyle's shoulder. "With this you're one." Demona looked in her mate's eyes and he in hers, it was as if she sunk in them. Then with unhidden passion and wildness, she embraced her new mate. *

*Still a bit confused, Demona came out of the tent in which she had made her first trip to the world of limbo. She looked around to the guardians on each side of the entrance who had raised their Angel swords, ready to kill her if her eyes had any different color or something of her behavior, which would be strange. But it wasn't and when Demona looked into her mate's face she saw a large smile. "Now you're a Shaman."*

*Demona lay her head on Shaman's hip, her face still full of sweat from the laying of her egg. It was ever a strenuous act for her like all other female gargoyles, not as long as the blasted humans who sometimes needed hours for their offspring to come... A fact, which made Demona grin every time she thought about it... But a gargoyles egg was much, much bigger than the head of a human baby to be born and as such harder to be pressed out. Her mate knew this and softly stroked her hair, purring and comforting her. *

All these memories circled in her mind like a storm and she was unable to stop it... 

She wanted to scream in anger, to cry about her loss or simply to break down, but at the border of her mind she heard somebody other crying. 

This brought her back to the present and she turned around from her dead mate and clan leader to the two young warriors who were supposed to learn something tonight... and perhaps they had.

She saw her daughter, crying on Wolf's chest and tears streaming out of Wolf's face. Demona couldn't blame them, Shaman had been the leader as long they lived, they looked... had looked up to him, perhaps seen him as a sort of father. But she couldn't take any consideration on this.

"Listen we..." She didn't come any further since her keen ears heard even through the earth how humans were coming nearer.

She held a talon in front of her lips, as a sign for both warriors to be quiet and her daughter was, despite the shock, quiet at once.

They listened to the sound of human boots coming nearer and finally stopping. The sounds stopped and Demona came to believe that they had discovered their hide away and the cave had become a trap for them, but then she heard the voices.

"We've lost their trail." One man said and his voice sounded vaguely familiar to Demona. 

"You promised we would kill the Demon and the sorcerer at once." One timid and angry voice said. "Now they'll come back to hunt our families, we...." 

"Shut up!" An angry voice which Demona recognized as the Hunter's. "I've hit the male demon directly in his chest, he is surely dead already."

"You can't know this." A third voice said. "We told you that the witchcraft of these beasts has healed even the strongest fevers in our town. Maybe he is healthy again and ready to attack us with the rest of his devil spawn."

Demona looked down on her mate... oh how she wished it!

"He isn't our main goal." The Hunter said calmly. "The She-Demon is! When we have her your main problem is solved."

"What about the gargoyles on the plain?" A fourth voice said. "They will take revenge."

"We will kill them after daybreak when they are stone." The Hunter ordered. "I don't think that whatever unholy sorcery protected them during the day is still there since their sorcerer is death."

"But the..." The first voice dared to ask. 

"I have taken care of a clan of these beasts already back in New York." The Hunter interrupted him. "I know how to do it and hey do you know? When you shatter them in the right way a part of them becomes still flesh during the night and when it has still a mouth it screams!!!" 

The men laughed and Demona clenched her fists under the earth, controlling herself not to storm upwards and attacking them.

"As you said." The third voice said. "But remember, we will pay first when you have killed all these beasts." 

"I'd say you have already paid, as all I want is the head of the She-Demon." The Hunter said. "Now come! Let's hurry, I don't want them to escape."

There were the sounds of boots again and Demona knew that the humans went further away from them. 

Her eyes were glaring red. She knew these voices! Two men she had such recognized as men out of the town and the others sounded even so familiar.... The humans had betrayed her anew!!! They had called the hunter to kill her and get rid of her clan. 

In this moment, she didn't want anything else than going out there and tearing these humans to pieces, but a voice held her back.

"Second." 

Demona looked around to Wolf who had called her. 

"What shall we do now?" He asked, trying to control his voice. 

Demona thought about it. She was leader now and that meant she had the responsibility of the clan, including the young warriors in front of her.

"I will go out and attack the humans to distract them. Then I will run away and let them follow me." She explained calmly and noticed that her daughter had stopped crying. "Five minutes after I am out of the cave you will return to the plain as fast as you can and report to the others what has happened. Tell them my orders is to do nothing but to wait on my return, we will decide later how we will react on this betrayal."

"But when you..." Wolf started but Demona interrupted him at once.

"No buts, you will do as I say." Demona said angrily and added a bit calmer. "Remember they can't harm me permanently. This…" She extended her crippled and still hurting wing, "will heal like the other injuries I had in my life." 

~Even when it hurts like hell~ she added in thoughts. 

"What about the leader?" Little Panther asked.

"Leave him here." Demona responded coldly. 

"But..." 

Demona snarled slightly. She was sick of the buts, why couldn't this youngling simply obey?

When she saw that on this, Little Panther had crawled back into Wolf's arms, she calmed down. There was no reason to let the anger that she felt for the human's come out on these younglings. 

"I know you dislike this. I too." She started. "But to take his... his body to the plain would slow you down and this might be deadly. He is dead, so saving your life has priority before honoring the death." Demona was quiet for some moments while looking back on the body of her mate. "It would be his will...." Then she looked back to the young warriors. "I will take him when I come back and then we can give him the memorial ceremony he deserves. I swear."

Both young warriors nodded and Demona turned to the exit, but then she stopped. 

Demona looked in both younglings eyes. "I know this is hard for you but believe me, I am proud of you and my mate would be too." She declared to them. "Follow my orders. I know you can handle it and don't fear, I'll be back to perform the ritual... the clan will be safe."

With this, Demona ran out of the cave to fight the fight she had hoped to leave behind.

****

09.08.98; 01:43; Castle Wyvern, Great Hall:

The present persons, humans and gargoyles alike, could grab the silence in the air when Demona made a break. The clan couldn't see grief in Demona's eyes, just pain... and hate.

Demona sighed and continued. "Two nights later, I came back."

"Two nights?" Angela asked surprised. "Mother what took you so long?" 

Demona grinned evilly. "I had fought." She explained and on the still curious looks of her daughter and many other clan members she added. "You've fought the Hunters already and know how hard it is?"

Angela nodded. She knew there had to be more, but her mother didn't want to tell and Angela knew from the few sure things that she knew about her mother that she would definitely not speak when she not wanted to.

"Before I returned to the plain I fulfilled a promise I made." Demona continued. 

****

10.06.1675; 21:02; Deep in the woods in front of a cave:

Demona landed in front of the cave, there she stood a while and looked ahead into the cave at the overhang that lay there like she remembered and she sensed no danger. Yet a part of her hesitated to move in, out of fear what she would see.

But there was no other way and she knew it. So she crawled in on all fours and at once saw the corpse of her dead mate lying in front of her. A part of her had hoped that the young warriors had disobeyed her order and had taken his corpse already to the plane so that she wouldn't have this sad duty, but this hope had perished. 

But another part of her was happy that it was, so that she could say goodbye to him personally and not around her clan who doubtfully would ever express their sorrow with her. No predator had made a meal from his corpse and the cool temperature under the earth had slowed down the decay process so that he seemed still as when she had left.

There was still the possibility that she could visit his ghost in the world of limbo, three nights were a long time for such but Demona knew that he would wait there for her to say goodbye. But this would be it, never again would they glide out together, never again would they laugh together or see how their children will grow up, never....

Her claw trembled while she stroke softly his head...

"The humans will pay for this!" She swore and felt her anger become so large that she believed her heart would crack. 

"THEY ALL WILL PAY FOR THIS!" She screamed out her anger and pain as her eyes glared red while tears were running down from them.

Demona wanted them all dead, not just the Hunters or all the humans in the town but all humans in the world. The hate, the pain that was rooted in the hate, which had been buried during her time with Shaman claimed her anew, more powerful and more demanding than ever before.

But then she looked on the closed eyes of her mate and remembered what he had said once about his first love, how she died through the human's hand and he had nearly destroyed the human's town. 

Did she want to do so? 

She thought about what she had heard of the men, that they had hired the Hunter, how they took part in the attack. She remembered that she had helped one of them to heal his leg or else it would have had to been amputated.

Yes, everything in her screamed to take revenge for him, to order her clan to wipe the damned town and all its residents from the face of earth. But something held her back when she looked back on her mate, another voice raised in her, his voice.

He had been so tortured by them, had lost someone he loved, but ultimately he had decided to try to coexist with them, for the best of his clan.

She thought about this. She could kill the humans in the town without much effort, as she knew that without the Hunter they were too afraid to attack them, but what then? 

If it became known that the town had been destroyed by her and her kind then the other humans surely wouldn't ignore this. Maybe the humans in the other towns would fear the same fate and leave her and her kind alone, but maybe they might even so try to kill her and Demona doubted that they could defy a siege for long. 

And what about the future? Even when they would be rid of the humans, the clan had become too large to survive without what the humans gave them from their supplies since they had decimated the game in the woods rapidly. 

~And when the next generation will hatch in three years,~ Demona thought, ~we will have even larger problems.~

Demona groaned. She did not want to do it, to be dependent on the humans, but she saw now that she had no other choice. Even the thought to simply steal the food they needed like she had done with her second clan wasn't possible, as these weren't the old times any more and the humans knew where she and the others lived. Sooner or later they would take revenge perhaps even call the army and her clan had no other places to move to, no good hiding places... She had no choice. 

Demona clenched her fists until they bled and looked to her mate. 

"Seemingly you were right my love..." She said with love and sarcasm to her dead mate. "There is no other way."

Softly she took his body in her arms and moved out of the cave. She felt how cold his body was, so frightening cold and she remembered how she once had found in him this warmth, which had not just warmed her body but her heart. How she had laughed, how....

A single tear rolled town her cheek.

~No~ she admonished herself. ~Later, now you've responsibilities.~

She thought about the future, what she would tell the clan. How to go on. 

She wouldn't destroy the town, but she sure wouldn't do as if nothing had happened. It would kill her if she did, she knew this, like it had killed her all those years ago in Wyvern when the humans treated her and her clan so ungratefully and she had no way to defend herself, even her clan wouldn't understand this.

She would go to the humans and demand that they delivered the men who had attacked her together with the Hunter and Demona knew she wouldn't have such mercy as Shaman had had. If they wouldn't do so at once then she would refuse to help them further like Shaman had done. The clan had enough supplies as reserve that they could survive on for some months and additionally they could go hunt, which wouldn't be much but enough to come through.

Demona smiled evilly.

~Perhaps I will even so bring the preacher to pray something true,~ she thought. ~When they still refuse after a month I might show them without their knowledge that shamans aren't just able to cure diseases.~ 

Michael came to her mind... she would see after this traitor! He had trapped them by saying that his daughter had fever? Demona would take care that he buried her soon. 

Sunk in her own thoughts she leaped into the clear air of the cloudless sky and glided, her dead mate in her arms, back to the plain and her clan... back home.

****

10.06.1675; 21:51; In the air before the plain:

Demona, her dead mate in her arms, slowly landed on the plain, she had sensed that something was wrong already in the air. Her keen ears hadn't heard any sound from the plain and she hadn't even seen one of the others patrolling at the border of the plain.

~You didn't expect merry chatter?~ Demona calmed herself. ~And why patrol the plain? We never did it before and the guardian spirit....~

Her thoughts were interrupted when she saw a sight that she had hoped to never see again. Full of shock she nearly dropped the cold body in her arms and unable to summon the strength to hold him further she laid him on the ground.

Crumbled stone lay in front of her and Demona knew all too well what this meant. From the mass of the stone she figured it had to be one of the youngest generation and from the fact that she recognised a beak, it had to be Little Racoon who was one of the cleverest of his generation and a possible candidate for her magical training.

She even so saw the instrument of this destruction, a hammer, not a morning star like she had nearly expected, a simple hammer had ended this hatchlings life, a life which had barely just started.

These thoughts crossed her mind without really bringing emotions, the shock was too large. She moved forward to the centre of the plain, the centre of the clan's life and while she did so, she saw more piles of crumbled stone, registering them with a part of her mind. 

Finally she reached the centre of the plain. The fire in the middle wasn't on like nearly every other night when the elders gathered there in order to warm their old bones and telling the young ones the history of the clan. Instead, only ash was in the stone circle and the dead fireplace was surrounded by dozens of piles of crumbled stone of every different structure and size. She could see one claw stretching out of one bunch, the half of one face....

It was too much for Demona, she sunk on her knees with tears floating down her cheeks. Then she threw her head backwards and screamed a scream full of grief, pain and hate echoing over the plain and deep in the valley, not that she bothered.

Again, like in Wyvern and Moray the humans had taken all she had had, her clan, her mate, her.... 

Demona held in, a thought came in her mind and she forced herself upon her feet. As fast as she could, Demona raced to the rookery hoping to find at least some sign of hope amongst all this death.

What she saw let all her hopes perish. The massive rookery door, which was mostly like the doors back in Wyvern, made to protect the eggs which were normally safe there even without the door. But now she saw something on the door, which froze her blood. A cross, painted on the door.... made of blood!

Under it a writing in Roman letters:

"_In Nomine Patre._"

Suddenly she discovered an axe lying beside the door, an axe with the symbol of Michael's family like he had shown her once.

She didn't want to go in, she knew what the humans had done with the eggs of other clans, but she knew that it was her duty to look after them. Praying that the humans had at least spared them, seeing it senseless to destroy them and so the clan had at least a future.

When she opened the heavy door the first thing she registered was the smell, a smell she couldn't identify at once. Part of it was blood, the other part...

Then she looked in and wished she hadn't, the smell came from the innards of the eggs, which was mixed with blood, the blood of the dead foetuses being torn much, much too early out of their eggs to survive.

Gargoyle eggs weren't stone by day like the elders, so the one who had done this mustn't have had much work. They had an hard shell and nor rats nor foxes, not even wolves were able to crack the shell, but against a human weapon they were fragile... so damned fragile. 

She saw the mixture of eggshells and little bodies and knew the one of her and her mate was amongst them. Even the little bodies had been destroyed, the limbs of their unready bodies had been partly torn off and some of them had broken heads.

Demona heard the flies summing through the air, having sensed the death in the cave and now hungry to get fed by this death. All this was far more than Demona could bear, in total horror she closed the door as fast as she could, knowing that she would never be able to open it again.

She slowly sunk to her knees and leaned on the door of the rookery, unable to breathe or even to cry since her pain was far above this. All her life had been crumbled to dust by the humans again and she knew she had been naive and foolish to think that it could be otherwise.

Her heart, her whole body felt cold and in the afterwards she couldn't say how long she knelt there just looking ahead like dead. 

But finally she heard something, which she hadn't expected, the painful scream of another gargoyle... a female as far as Demona could say.

In Demona's heart raised something like hope, of a kind she had just sworn to never allow herself again, while she raced like mad to the centre of the plain.

~By the dragon, ~ she prayed. ~By the Great Spirit let it be true. ~

And when she came to the centre of the plain, to the death fire amongst which laid the remains of the greatest parts of her clan, she saw something which made her stop at once.

Amongst all this dead she saw her daughter, living, but seemingly in shock of all this death.

"DAUGHTER!" Demona screamed in total surprise and happiness. 

The so-called Little Panther looked up in surprise at her leader, seemingly as surprised as Demona to see living amongst all this death. 

Their eyes met and as fast as they could they moved to each other and embraced as hard as they could.

"Mother..." Lucifia whispered unbelievably.

Demona stroke Little Panther's hair while she buried her face in her leader's shoulder. She felt the hot tears of her daughter on her shoulder while she made reassuring sounds since she didn't know what else to do. 

Others, human especially, would have said that all would be all right again and that life would go on and the pain would end. But Demona knew better, she knew that it would never again become completely well again and that a part of her heart would forever feel the pain deep inside like she had and ever would with her two former clans.

After a few minutes, which seemed like hours, Demona released her daughter from her embrace and looked at her. Little Panther's green eyes were red and puffy, they showed so much pain that it tortured Demona's heart. 

"Second," Little Panther finally said. "I..." She swallowed, "what has happened?" 

Demona looked on her. "The humans have done this." ~Always the humans. ~

"But..." The young warrior said, seemingly having problems to hold her voice and finally it sounded like an accusation. "But the guardian spirit should have protected us!"

Sadly Demona shook her head. 

"He would have but...." Demona stopped a second. "But I think he was too weak to do it. The death of the gargoyle that had bound him here and the fact that we have already reached the third night.... It was too much." 

~Like I have feared.~ She added in thoughts. ~Like I have feared.~ 

"I searched for leaves in the woods..." Little Panther explained. "We needed them for tonight... the elders had decided that my brother should try the ascent to a full shaman tonight and then try to bind the guardian spirit..." Her eyes grew big. 

"My brother!" She said. "He might... I mean he can't...." 

Her mind seemed to stop her from completely understanding... but when her elder shook her head slightly, she sobbed all the more even when she was able to hold her strength.

"They are all dead..." Little Panther noted. "What... what shall we do now?"

Demona looked into her daughter's eyes. 

"We will take revenge for the death of our clan." She said with red glowing eyes. "We will make them pay... them all!" 

Little Panther nodded, even when she seemed not so full of rage like Demona, then she looked around.

"It has ended?" She asked, "I mean all I knew, all I had, I..." she looked deep in Demona's eyes with eyes, which were so much. "I feel like a part of me has died."

Demona knew what she meant. She had felt the same when she was there 600 years ago, amongst the shattered remains of her clan, with her first love being trapped in stone, unable to reach Katharine for stealing the eggs. A part of her had died there and as much as Shaman had been able to heal some wounds she would never be the same gargoyle again she had been before this... this part of her was gone.

And the same she saw now in her daughter's eyes, the same pain, the same loss of soul, the same change.

"Yes it'll never be the same." Demona said. "Like you… Lucifia." 

The newly named Lucifia looked up to Demona. 

  
"Lucifia." She repeated as if she tasted the name on her tongue "I like this name... Definitely more than Little Panther... mother." 

The last words came out of her mouth nearly shy since she was unsure if her *mother* would accept this, but her fears proofed ungrounded since she nodded with a warm smile. 

"Yes daughter." She answered.

Mother and daughter looked at each other, they both remembered the first time it became clear for Little Panth... Lucifia that there was more between them than the simple bound between clan members. 

****

23.09.1667; 21:02; Outside the church during the evening mass:

Unnoticed by the humans inside, a gargoyle teenage girl with black hair had approached the church window and eavesdropped with her keen gargoyle ears. She knew she shouldn't, she knew if her elders, especially her second would find out this, she would have the greatest of problems. 

But even though she would be sent to the rookery, her curiosity was greater than her fear, she simply wanted to hear what these humans said about her kind. He had arrived two months ago and the humans had built him a building, a church they called it. 

The second had come three nights before back from the town with such anger in her eyes that she and her siblings had went out of her way at once since they knew her in this mood and didn't want to get in the line of fire. From the curses they had heard from the cave of the leader and the whispers she and her siblings had heard from the elders, they knew that a new man had arrived in the town and was going to spread lies about them to the other humans.

When she had asked an elder what a preacher was, she had told her that it was a shaman for the humans, the whites especially. That it would be the connection to their god, but he would not have the powers like the clan's leader, he couldn't call the spirit or heal injuries but simply lead through his words and this book, the bible. 

This had made her even more curious. How could he claim to be chosen by his god when he had no power or even was able to be of any use for his clan? And why did they listen to him?

Full of questions she had decided to investigate it by herself. She had asked her closest brother, the wolf featured one, to come with her but he had refused, but he had promised to cover her for the elders. 

She had to admit that this was a bit scary. Yes she had already visited the town to investigate it, even when her clan didn't allow that, but these were trips together with her siblings, games to see who would be the first to get scared and return to the secure plain. And like back then, the main goal was not to be seen by the humans of the town.

So she had good luck now because the gathered congregation listened and stared at the preacher and what he said let Little Panther finally understand why her second had been so upset after she had heard him.

"God created the world and Adam as the ruler over this world and like it is written here he saw that it was good, it was holy. But already with Adam's first wife, Lilith, the evil came in the shape of a woman in the paradise since she was rebellious and disobedient to her man and ruler. So he rejected her like it was good since all women who don't obey their man and ruler are evil and just evil can come from them." 

Little Panther couldn't see him but of the speech he hold she imagined an enormous human with a severely dark face. 

"But not enough after this she committed a rather larger sacrilege by becoming a demon's wife, married by Lucifer the fallen angel himself and the children of this unholy connection, the children of sin are now in our middle." 

Little Panther had no doubt whom he meant, but the thought seemed funny to her. Being the children of demons, bad spirits and a human woman like the preacher claimed would be humiliating... being related to humans! They were weak, had no respect for nature or even for one another and even when they built some fascinating things, there was no reason to make this relationship closer. The second had warned her and her siblings to do so and now she proofed right.

"The children of these evil ones call themselves Gargoyles, but they are nothing but demons. They claim the right to share the world, our world with us but they have no right to this. God himself allowed them just to become flesh by night to show that they are creatures of darkness and worthy of his grace, not worthy of his love."

Little Panther grinned, she had no intention to share her time with the humans like neither the preacher claimed nor she wanted the grace or love of the human god. 

"But to claim the gift of their own god sent to you by his almighty grace, your crop reaped by your hand, they temp you to an unholy bargain to feed their unholy spawn. If god would truly allow them to live in his chosen country he would take care that they find enough to feed them by themselves. Instead they take it from your family by curing the diseases of your family with the help of their magic, their dark arts given them by the lords of hell."

He stopped for a while and Little Panther could see it before her eyes how he stood there, looking angrily at the humans of the town.

"I say to you that they use these powers even to make you sick and because you search their help you not just loose your harvest, but your soul! Yes your soul, because all who help these demons commit an act of sin against god, an act...."

Little Panther didn't really listen anymore since she had checked what he said, gargoyles were evil, and gargoyles were demons, don't talk with them....

~Can he just lie or make fun?~ Little Panther asked herself. She had no idea why the human spread such lies about her and her clan even when her second told her that humans lied nearly every time.

"Now let us celebrate the new bound!" The preacher intoned. 

"In the night he had been betrayed Jesus our lord, gods son, took the goblet, handed it to his disciples and said: 

__

This is my blood I gave for you. 

Take it and drink of it as the sign of the new bound.

Then he took the bread, divided it, gave it to his disciples and spoke:

__

This is my flesh I gave for you.

Take it and eat of it as sign of the new bound. 

"Now let us celebrate this by eating this gifts of our lord." 

This shocked Little Panther. 

~They are eating the flesh and drinking the blood of their god?~ She asked herself, ~what are these barbarians?~

Pictures came to her mind, of all these humans eating flesh of one of their own kind and drinking his blood.

So deep was she in her thoughts that she failed to noticed that the preacher had finally become quiet. She quickly looked up to the moon and noticed from its stand that she had already been here longer than she had wanted. More importantly she had broken her promise to her brother to be back after the evening mess. 

She was going to turn her back on the church, when she noticed something. The lights in the church had been turned off, which meant that the humans had gone. Humans disliked the night since their senses were weak and unable to come along with the darkness. This was one of the few things she knew about them, which meant the humans had probably left the building. 

Little Panther was curious, as she had never been in a human building before and the building in which they honoured their god was even more attempting. She knew she shouldn't do this, she knew she would probably got into greater problems than she had ever been before, but her still nearly childish curiosity fed by mainly living on a boring plain was more powerful. 

Slowly and noiseless, like she had learned from her teacher and by many games with her siblings, she crept around the back part of the building up to the front side with the large door, just like the door of the rookery. 

The door wasn't shut so the young gargoyle slowly crept in. What she saw made her wonder. It was unlike she had expected it to be. The first thing she noticed was the cross hanging from the ceiling. An instrument of death as far as she knew and Little Panther wondered what it could stand for.

~Maybe they punish the ones who offend against their rules by crucifying?~ She asked herself, this sounded first abstruse, ~but when they even eat flesh and blood of their god?~

But when she saw the goblet and dish standing on the altar, she wondered. If they truly had eaten flesh and drunken blood then there had to be signs of it?

Slowly she neared the altar and was already just some metres away so that she could study it more exactly when...

"GO AWAY DARK SPIRIT IN THE NAME OF THE LORD OUR GOD!!!" 

Shocked, Little Panther made a jump to the side, too shocked to do anything else. Then she saw the man who was obviously the preacher holding a cross and a book, the bible as far as Little Panther had heard, in his hands. He was nothing like she had imagined him, she had thought he would be large and impressive like her leader, but indeed he was small, just as large as she herself was and she wasn't large compared to her elders. His red head was decorated by a small hair garland around his else hairless head and he wore a black robe which let him seem, despite his small seize, threatening.

"I..." Tried the shocked Little Panther, who had never before spoken with a human, to say in his language which she knew of thanks to her second "I meant no harm."

"You tried to steal the holy corpse of our lord to desecrate it and use it for the unholy mess of your demon kind!" The preacher said "I saw it."

"NO!" Little Panther tried desperately to explain "I just wanted..."

But the preacher interrupted her at once. 

"I don't believe your lies demon!" The preacher said angrily "I'll..."

But he was interrupted himself by the sounds of the church door being torn open and both looked in shock to the open door. In the light of the moon stood an impressive female gargoyle with eyes burning red like hell, combined so fitting with her hair as red as human blood. 

She terrified both the gargoyle teen and the human preacher deeply for different reasons. The human preacher because he knew that she was the mate and second in command of the demons, even so a dark sorceress which bewitched the men of his parish. 

The young gargoyle on the contrary had a deeper and more likely reason to fear, since she knew that she was in greatest trouble now. 

But the angry demon did not eye her first but the preacher. 

"What happened here?" She asked angrily while coming nearer.

The preacher stepped back in shock and held the cross and the bible even stronger. 

"GO BACK INTO HELL DAUGHTER OF LILITH HERSELF!!!!" He intoned.

Demona studied him with red glaring eyes and for a moment Little Panther thought that her second would tear him to pieces straight before her eyes, but she controlled herself and turned her eyes instead to Little Panther.

"Why is he so upset?" Demona asked icily. "I mean despite the fact that you entered this building, not to speak of this town."

Little Panther winced as she knew this tone, it was when the second was hard before exploding, but before she could say anything the preacher took the word.

"Stealing our holy relics," the preacher said. "Our host to celebrate your unholy rituals, to desecrate the gifts of our god."

Demona looked on the man with symbolic pity.

"Hardly human," she said coolly. "Our rituals are truly holy since we really have contact with these powers who created this world and our *relics* have true power, so we have no need for this."

To Little Panther's surprise the preacher was able to become even redder in his face. He was going to say something when Demona snarled angrily on which he held the bible once again upwards. 

"We will go now." She said even so to the preacher and to her rookery daughter. "And don't worry human, no one of us, this one especially," with this Demona gave the youngster a hard look, which made her look to the ground, "will ever enter your church again."

With this she laid firmly her claw on the young female's shoulder and began to lead her out. 

"Yes go and never come again or the wrath of my god will hit you..." He looked to Demona who had stopped, "and your daughter."

On this Demona's claw tightened a bit around Little Panther's shoulder. Little Panther on the other hand was shocked...

"Daughter?" She asked surprised. "No we..."

"Don't lie to me child of Lucifer," the preacher said, now standing with his back to the altar as if he wanted to protect it from them. "I can see the resemblance, you have the same poison-green eyes full of wickedness and evil and I will wipe you...."

Demona turned around to the preacher and snarled louder and more threatening than ever before on him, which made him step back until his back touched the altar, being in the focus of her deep red eyes.

"Listen you puny human, you will never threaten any of my clan's children again!" She commanded in a tone, which allowed no refuse. "If you do I swear I'll send you to your god faster than you can pray for forgiving for the sin, which is your existence." 

Which this she turned around and practically pulled Little Panther out off the church. Outside she tried to calm her second. 

"Second I...." Little Panther started, but she wasn't interested and raised a claw to make her quite.

"Follow me," she said icily and Little Panther nodded desperately.

Wordlessly they climbed upon the roof of the church, ignoring the humans of the town coming to see what had happened and glided back to the plain.

This was the longest flight in Little Panther's young life, but it seemed not long enough for her since she knew what would wait for her back on the plain.

Both gargoyles landed on the border of the plain even when Little Panther was not half so artistic like her second, she had other problems at the moment than her skill to land. 

Her second seemingly didn't see this so.

"You have to learn landing better," she said without turning around. "Your skill hasn't improved since a year."

Little Panther swallowed.

"I try my best second." 

Demona finally turned around and looked into the youngster's eyes, which were so much like her own and Little Panther saw the answer even when her second didn't speak it out. 

~Not good enough, far not good enough.~

"Why did you go down there?" Demona asked icily. "You know that I and the leader, like every other elder has forbidden it for you and your siblings often enough!" When Little Panther nodded she added, "then why?"

Little Panther swallowed, this was even harder than when the second was mad on her. The ice in her voice seemed to directly hit her heart.

"I... I just was curious." Little Panther started "I mean all these human rituals, the church, god..." She desperately searched to find a spark of understanding in her second's eyes, but they stood cold. "It is just so exciting."

"It is not exciting it is dangerous!" Demona yelled angrily on her, which made Little Panther flinch. "A fact I have told you again and again." 

"But you and the leader go there even so!" Little Panther protested.

"We visit the humans because we have to for the sake of our clan." Demona explained. "Not for fun!"

"But..." Little Panther started, not willing to give up so easily. "As a warrior I have to know the world around me, not just the plain and the woods. You told us that you've often visited cities of the humans in the Old World."

Little Panther's eyes glittered by this when she remembered the unbelievable stories of her second. Of stone buildings and castles so large that they were able to inhabit a gargoyle clan and many humans, the seemingly endless ocean, dark and full of mysteries, cities with thousands over thousands of humans.

This all she and her siblings just knew from the stories of the elders who had been expelled from their original protectorates in Germany and naturally from her second, who seemed to have had a life full of wonders.

Demona's view on the youngster stayed hard. "Yes and I told you and your brothers and sisters that I didn't do this because I wanted to, but because I had been forced to this since the humans hunted me." She explained. "And as a warrior it is even so necessary to know your borders and to follow the order of the leader. The human town is definitely outside this border and I thought you would have understood that."

Demona held her view and so showed her disappointment in this youngling.

"You can't trust the humans." Demona added. "They are neither our friends nor our allies, no human is or can ever be, believe me I know. We tolerate them because they give us food since they have expelled the most game out off the woods and we give them medicine in exchange, nothing more. If they could they would gladly kill us all and I must say that it is the same on my side."

Little Panther looked shocked at her second, it had ever been clear that she mistrusted the humans, everybody in the clan did, but so clear she had never said it and a part in Little Panther knew that she wouldn't repeat this in front of the clan.

Demona sighed. She knew she had said too much especially in front of a youngster, but it simply burned in her heart like a hot flame and the preacher had fed this flame even more.

"I know that your mind is hungry after other things than this area," she explained "and I think that my stories might have contributed to this. But remember the place where we live is the most secure place I've ever seen for our kind and this means something. You and your siblings are lucky to have such a home with the clan and don't need to live under the fear not to wake up one evening like all the other clans do." 

"And as I have said, in three years I will lead you and your siblings around until to the coast." Demona saw the glittering in the youngster's eyes and added. "When I think that you're mature enough, something I don't see yet."

Little Panther nodded desperately, as she really didn't want to miss this event when they would finally see more of the world. The second had promised to lead them one month away from the rest of the clan, wandering until the coast, which would be their first and perhaps even their last great trip. 

Little Panther and her siblings were already excited to do so and perhaps going through the greatest adventure of their lives. Needless to say that this was a damned good reason to behave. 

~What if I miss the trip because of this...~ Little Panther didn't even wanted to think about this.

Little Panther looked deep into her second's eyes, as she knew that she would get perhaps in greater troubles, but...

"Second, the human called me your daughter." Little Panther said.

"I know." Demona simply responded. "And?"

Little Panther hesitated, did she go too far? But she knew she couldn't go back now.

"Is it true?" She finally asked. "Are you my mother?"

The second did not answer at once, indeed she was silent for many a long seconds, which seemed for Little Panther like hours and studied her eyes with her owns.

"I'm rookery mother for all clan members hatched or grown up since I arrived here." Demona said calmly. "As to you. If you ask me if you are my flesh and blood, then the answer is yes you are." 

She saw how Little Panther's eyes grew big and added.

"But this means nothing." Demona explained. "We don't follow the human tradition, but our children are children of the whole clan how you know and such are you. That I've laid your egg means nothing."

"I... I understand." Little Panther answered while she tried to come along with this. 

~What did I think else?~ Little Panther asked herself.

She felt a bit guilty of being such a egoistic that a part of her heart wanted to claim the second as her own, wanted to earn her feelings more than her siblings, but she felt so. Even so she couldn't speak with her siblings, even not her closest wolf-featured brother or even the elders about that. Once she and her siblings had asked one elder about the human rookeries and were totally surprised when they heard that the humans had no rookeries, yes even don't lay eggs but their children were *born* and just cared for by two humans, their *parents.* 

In the end she and her siblings had made jokes about the human children, how they called their hatchlings, who needed a mother to care for them. Now she looked on her second and knew that she would never look on her in the same way again like she had the years before.

"Good." Demona said and so interrupted her daughter's thoughts. "To make clear that you really understand our ways you've now the opportunity to get closer with your younger brothers and sister by spending the rest of the night in the rookery." 

Little Panther swallowed. The hatchlings were now nearly 10 years old, also 5 in human age, sure they would soon leave the rookery, but they were still little hatchlings and to spend the rest of the night with a vivid bunch of little imps. She groaned, but tried her best not to show it to her second since she knew that this would bring her even greater trouble. 

"For the rest of the week you will even so help your clan mothers to guard them and as addition you will help to cook the meals... Clear?" Demona finally added.

Little Panther nodded, even when she felt even worse than before. Herding the hatchlings! It was easier to herd a bunch of fleas or trying to hunt game blindfold, but she knew that she definitely did not have a choice.

"Well then," the second noted. "You know where the rookery lies so go to it, I will come later this night to see you." 

At once Little Panther turned around to follow the order.

~She is my mother...~ She thought while doing so.

She knew the second had been right, seeing her so was not the gargoyle way and by the look she had given her Little Panther knew that the second didn't want it so, but why did she have to think on it still? 

Because she adored the second, the stories of her adventures, her bravery and wilfulness, alike with the fact that she was the greatest warrior Little Panther and some of her siblings thought had ever lived. But there was more, the nights when she had come to them in the rookery when they were still much younger and sung them rookery songs of her old clan in Scotland. When she had done so, she ever had this slightly sad and painful look in her eyes, not as much that it was obvious, but as much that Little Panther had noticed it. 

One night she had asked her why she was so sad when she sung to her this song of Scotland. Even when she had tried to hide it, Little Panther had seen that it surprised her very much. Finally the second had knelt down in front of her and told her that there had been other rookeries in Scotland, which were gone now and that this made her still sad sometimes. 

On this Little Panther had promised the second that she would never go. The Second had just smiled and stroked the little hatchlings hair. Then she said that she knew this and was very thankful for this and that she should go back to her siblings.

Now, deep in thoughts, silently she promised the second another thing. She would make her proud, she would prove her worthiness in the second's eyes and show that she was really worthy to be her flesh and blood.

So in thoughts she went slowly into the rookery.

****

09.08.98; 02:11; Castle Wyvern, Great Hall:

Angela, who had held her mother's claw while these had told of how she discovered this massacre, looked a bit shocked at her mother. 

"She asked you if she was your daughter and you said this?" Angela asked her unbelieving. "How could you?"

Demona sighed.

"Well what else should I have said?" Demona asked calmly. 

"That you love her," Angela started. "That you were proud of her, that you would be there for her... That you wanted to be her mother, anything of this." 

Demona shook her head. 

"I was her rookery mother." She noted. 

"This isn't the same." Angela said angrily. 

"No," Demona agreed, "but it was all I could give her." When she saw that Angela still wasn't convinced she added. 

"As second I couldn't favour one hatchling over another by claiming it as my own." Demona explained, knowing the fact that Goliath had done so very well and knowing even so that he had problems with this now. "Even if I wanted to."

Angela looked to her mother, as these were nearly the same words her father had used. Suddenly Angela realised something that she hadn't thought during the whole time she knew her mother. Deep in her heart she had always wished that the massacre wouldn't had happened and that she would have been with her parents as a family. But now she saw that if it hadn't have happened, then her father and mother would have never claimed her as their own. Worse, she herself would have probably never had wanted to, but had seen herself as a child of the clan and the leader and second just as some elders amongst many. 

"The lass is right." Hudson's rookery brother who had named himself Agamemnon said. "She couldn't act any other way."

There were agreeing murmurs amongst the clan, even the largest part of Broadway's rookery seemingly agreed on this. Angela looked straight into Broadway's eyes, he had kept a neutral face during the debate and now avoided his love's eyes.

~You wouldn't,~ Angela asked silently. ~Would you?~

Angela looked again to her mother, she knew that further discussions wouldn't lead to anything, especially with a clan who agreed with her mother, but she swore to herself that she would speak with her about this later. 

"Why this name?" Fuchsia who sat beside her mate asked and after a look from her sister, she added. "I mean Lucifer... Lucifia this really sounds after darkness," ~like your name~ "why did you choose it?"

Demona smiled viciously, a smile Deborah would gladly wipe from her former pupils face... preferable with a morning star, which would solve even some more problems.

But before Demona could start Goliath interrupted her.

"It was a fake..." He explained with a hard look to his ex-mate. "Lucifer isn't the name for the devil." 

Angela looked surprised to her father while Demona just studied him calmly.

"But it is." Angela protested. 

Goliath shook his head. "No, you relay on the bible that refers him as god's first angel before his downfall." He studied his former second and mate for a splint of a second. "But indeed Lucifer means *Daystar* or *Son of the dawn, Son of light.,* or in old Babylon, as a name for the Venus. The Jews took this over as a name for the devil during their captivity through Babylon and the Christians took it over from them."

"Well who says that all the time you spend in the library to study the human books was for nothing." Demona noticed sarcastically. "But there is another relation. The roman god Lucifer was the bringer of light, the ghost of the air and the symbol of enlightenment." 

For a moment it was silent in the room. Finally Angela started to speak.

"And what did you mean when you gave her this name?" Angela asked, sensing the tension between her mother and her father.

"All of this." Demona responded. "It should bring fear into the hearts of the humans. And soon I proved right with my choice when we attacked the humans to take revenge."

****

10.06.1675; 23:07; The town:

Unearthly cries broke through the silence of the night. It seemed as if they echoed through the complete valley and overlapped themselves. The humans in the town shuddered by these cries since they knew who announced themselves with this. 

The men had assembled in the middle of the town near the fireplace they had used the last time to call the gargoyles. They stood with their swords, pitchforks and one man even had a gun ready in his hand. It was a tensed situation since the assumed attack didn't start at once and not in the form they supposed it to be. Instead of being filled with flying demons, the sky which had been clear before started to become full of dark thunderclouds.

But these thunderclouds were nothing like the humans in the town had seen before. They didn't come from any direction, but appeared suddenly over them and enlarged rapidly. Instead of giving rain for the land, the clouds just started to bear lightening and thunder in such a number that it sounded like drums booming in the tact of war.

  
Timidly, the men crowded together and their horror enlarged when a lightening bolt struck down directly aside them, others met the houses and set them aflame. Some made a cross while others murmured prayers to the almighty god, but their god seemed to have taken a vacation since at this moment the earth started to shake. 

Some of the men lost the ground under their feet and fell down while others watched in horror how their houses, with their helpless families in it, began to shake and some on the border began to collapse. Just before they thought Armageddon had started, the earthquake stopped as did the lightening. The infernal noises stopped as fast as they had begun just to be replaced by something worse, the absolute silence. 

Breathlessly the men listened to the night and looked to the sky, which was still full of clouds and waited on what would happen next. Suddenly the cries, which had started this inferno, began anew, but this time nearer.... much nearer.

Suddenly it broke through the clouds above their heads, a creature they all knew as the sorceress of the demons with hair like fire and now the eyes in the same way. She fell down on them like a stone and landed on one man in the middle, breaking his spine by this.

Demona looked like a wild animal while she snarled and looked to the humans who encircled her in fear. She quickly drew her sword from the sleeve on her back and attacked. The person who she attacked first had a broken nose and Demona had a damned good idea where he had it from since she recognized him with his voice as one of the men who had helped hire the hunter.

He tried to block her with his own sword, but Demona was faster and with one blow she cut off his right hand with which he had held his sword. The human hadn't even have time to scream in shock and pain or to see his wound since Demona gave him a kick in the stomach, which flew him some meters backward while she blocked another attack of one man with a pitchfork.

Yet despite her total superiority above every one of these humans, measured by her strength, anger and experience in fighting, there was less hope that she would have success at killing them all. They simply pressed on her by their mass of fifteen humans against one gargoyle and the fact that their fear wasn't as large as to let them run away.

"I thought she was dead," one man said to another.

"She must have survived the fall." The other man answered

But just when the men thought they would have success without a much higher number of death, they heard another cry in the night that was frightening similar to the one of the demon in front of them, but somehow smaller. 

In shock, some men looked around, which led to one man getting hit by an arrow, directly into his heart. The last thing he saw was a demon with hair darker than the night and eyes red like hell, kneeling on a roof with a bow in her claw and taking another arrow from the quiver on her back with a skilful movement. 

At the same time Demona took advantage of the men's surprise and stabbed one man's stomach with her sword.

"Flee, we can't win." One man screamed, dropped his pitchfork and ran away. 

This caused the others to give up even so and they turned their back to Demona to run back to their families. On this Demona threw her sword at one fleeing man's back of whom she knew had taken part in the Hunter's hunt. Another was hit by an arrow directly in-between his eyes and instantly fell dead to the ground.

Demona went to the dead man with the sword in his back and pulled it out, ignoring the fleeing humans. She looked around and noticed that her daughter had landed beside her.

"This was easy." Lucifia noticed and Demona sensed the regret in her voice, the unsatisfied bloodlust.

Demona nodded. "We will go into the houses and kill the men one by one in front of their families." She explained.

"What about the rest of the humans?" Lucifia asked while she fixed the bow on her back again and drew her sword from her side.

"We will let them live." Demona said with an evil grin.

"But our revenge...." Lucifia started with surprise in her green eyes.

"This is our revenge." When Demona still saw the surprise in her daughter's eyes, she smiled with love in her eyes. ~She still has a lot to learn. ~ "Dead people don't suffer, but when we kill the men in front of their families like they killed our whole clan..."

Lucifia understood and smiled evilly. "Yes, this is fitting..." She replied. "They will feel the same pain like we do." 

Demona nodded. "We will...." She couldn't finish this sentence since she was interrupted by a loud voice.

"IN THE NAME OF OUR HOLY GOD, GO BACK TO HELL FILTHY DEMONS!!!"

Demona looked to the church. The preacher stood in front of it with the bible in his hand that he had seemingly read. Lucifia was going to take the bow from her back when Demona stopped her. 

"No," she explained. "He's mine."

Lucifia nodded.

"I will see to the other humans." Lucifia said. "Nobody will be able to flee."

Demona looked at her for one moment, as she didn't want to let her go into any of the houses alone, but most of the humans had already run away so they wouldn't be hard enemies... and she wouldn't need much time with the preacher. 

"Agreed, I will join you in a little while," Demona answered. "Be careful, I don't want to loose you too daughter."

"I will." Lucifia promised with a smile. "I will never go!" Then she went off to the nearest house. 

Demona looked at her daughter's back for some seconds and then she centered her eyes on the preacher who still stood in front of his church and tried exorcism against her and her daughter.

With the sword in her hand, she went up to him.

"How dare you attack us demon!" The preacher accused her.

"In Nomine Patre," Demona responded while grinning evilly. "Such you reason it ever or?"

"Your curses have no power over me," the preacher replied. "In the name of my god..." 

He never ended his sentence since Demona drove her sword through the stomach of the man. Then she slowly turned the sword around and allowed the preacher to scream in pain.

"Oh, does it seem as if your god has left you?" Demona asked softly, seeing the pain, despair... and the fear in his eyes.

Demona saw how his eyes became dumber, how the life flood out of him and was just going to give him an extra portion of pain on his trip to his creator when...

"DEMONA!"

The so addressed turned around and pulled the sword out of the preacher so that he collapsed. She knew this voice! The voice was owned by a special human, the only human in the town she had believed to be able to trust... the human who had led her into the Hunter's trap.

"Michael." Demona snarled. Her eyes, which were glaring like fire, focused on the man.

There he stood, on the path which led to the woods, looking at her with an unreadable expression. He must have heard the screams out of the town and come to see what had happened.

Like a flash she rushed to him, her sword flashing in the moon's light, her red hair flaming around her fire like head.

"RHOOOOAAR!" Demona screamed furiously and hit him with her fist directly in his face, which made him fly some meters backward and land on his back in the moist earth of the path.

Michael had neither the time to register that his nose was broken and bleeding down his face nor the time to stand up again, since at this moment Demona threw her shadow over him by enfolding her wings and coming nearer.

"Traitor!" She snarled on him and he saw in her eyes his death.

"Demona please, I had no choice..." He began timidly. He had never feared her before, but now when those bloody eyes sparkled down on him he did, more than anything before in his life. "They would have killed my daughter if I wouldn't have done like they ordered." 

"And so you killed my whole clan instead!!!" Demona accused him. 

"Your clan is dead?" Michael started his eyes large of surprise and fear. "Demona I..."

He didn't say any further, as the demon grabbed his shoulder with one claw, held him up until his feet didn't touch the earth anymore and pinned him on the wall of the nearest house. Then she drew her sword and stabbed it through his left shoulder, fixing him on the wall. Michael clenched his teeth trying not to scream in pain and did not look on the sword. Instead he just looked into Demona's eyes. 

"Please listen," Michael pleaded. "I haven't killed your clan and nobody of the town has gone up there since they fear the spirit that protects your plain, I...."

With all her power and as fast as Michael was able to see, Demona rammed an axe she had worn directly to the right of Michael's face in the wall.

"AND WHAT IS THAT?!" She asked him and asked herself why she was doing this, why did she speak with him when she could kill him so easily and painfully at once.

Michael looked in shook on the axe with the banner of his family and saw that it was full of blood and something he couldn't identify, which of course was from the eggs from the rookery.

"Where..." Michael started in shock. "Where did you get this?"

"It lay before the rookery," Demona said with her face dangerously close to his. "The rookery with the eggs you had destroyed." She looked him deep in the eyes uncaring that tears were floating down her cheeks, this human wouldn't live long enough to report to the others of this. "You killed them all."

"Someone stole the axe yesterday." Michael replied. "I..."

"LIAR!!!" Demona screamed at him and then started to dig her claws deep into his shirt and slowly lead them above his stomach while the shirt became red by blood. 

"I shouldn't have been surprised." Demona explained calmly to him. "Never trust a human." She laughed bitterly never taking her eyes from Michael's face, which had become a mask of pain. In the background she heard more human screams of pain, grief and horror and knew that her daughter was showing her anger even so. 

"I really thought that I had learned my lesson once and for all," she continued. "But you showed me that I hadn't... Thank you!"

With this, she dug her claws even deeper into Michael's soft flesh until his voice stopped her again.

"My axe, "he started and stopped since the pains lowered his ability to speak. "When I should have done this, why should I have left my axe there where you would find it?"

"You thought I was dead..." Demona explained angrily, "you all thought so."

She dug deeper into Michael's stomach, soon she would be at his intestines and then...

"BUT I NEED MY AXE!!!" Michael screamed out loud, laying all his pain in this.

"What?" Demona asked, surprised that this human did not beg for mercy like the ones before had senselessly done.

"I need my axe," he replied, trying to control his pain. "I can't go into town to buy one since the people here avoid me... So why should I have left it there? If I thought you were dead then there was no reason to hurry." He asked her desperately. "So why should I have left it there? Believe me; the one who stole it must have placed it there to make you believe that I was it." 

Demona looked deep into Michael's eyes searching for signs of betrayal, but she didn't find any. This didn't mean anything as when Macbeth had denied his betrayal back in Scotland he had even so sounded convincing.... nearly. 

"And you think this makes it better?" Demona asked him angrily. "First through you the Hunter killed my mate, then your people kill my clan and you really think I would spare you?" 

Michael swallowed and felt the taste of blood in his mouth.

"They weren't it..." He started and when he heard the snarl out of Demona's throat he continued. "Believe me, I was here the last two days and tried to convince the men who I knew took part in the Hunter's scheme, the one I knew you would kill... tried to convince them to go away for the sake of the town... Believe me, nobody was there who'd dare attack your clan... they feared the spirit."

Demona looked on him snarling, well knowing that he lied as all humans lied! But a soft and constant voice, a voice she knew as such of her mate, asked her one question she didn't want to hear.

~ What if he speaks the truth? ~

~ He lies ~ she responded in her mind ~who else if not these humans could....~

"No..." Demona sighed. This couldn't be, as just the thought about this showed how weak she was, hearing on this human... a human who had her betrayed once already.

~ What if he is right? ~ The voice asked once again.

*"In Nomine Patre."..... "Your curses have no power over me..."*

Demona looked in shock through the window in the wall, which she registered just now. There was her daughter attacking the man of the house who tried desperately to defend himself with a sword. Demona noticed that he had no chance and that Lucifia did well. At any time she would have noticed her daughter's progress with approval, but now she could just see it with fear.

~ She has a reason to fight better ~ Demona calmed herself ~ this is no training and she knows it~

Suddenly Demona saw how a boy, perhaps 10 years old and surely the attacked farmer's son, came from behind Lucifia's back and tried to attack her with a little dagger. Demona's first instinct was to warn her daughter, but then she saw how Lucifia slapped the dagger out of the boy's hand with a hit of her tail while killing the father with a fast stab through his eye directly into his brain. 

Then Lucifia turned around to the boy who was totally shocked by the death of his father and full of fear of the creature he saw now standing before him. Lucifia neared the shivering boy with her sword, which was covered in blood, in her right claw and Demona saw in her eyes what she intended to do.

~ She has a right to do this! ~ Demona justified this. ~They had even no mercy with our hatchlings, why should we have mercy with their spawn? ~

Suddenly a woman, seemingly the mother, placed herself in front of Lucifia. 

"Please have mercy, he is just a child." The woman pleaded and in this moment Demona couldn't help but feel respect for this woman who tried to protect her child with her life.

But Lucifia didn't care, as she grabbed the woman with one claw on her breast and threw her against the wall so hard that Demona heard the woman's spine breaking.

Such power, even Demona wasn't so strong and Lucifia was still not grown up. 

~ It can't be ~ Demona repeated, but the doubt was set and her mind was working.

Demona looked again into Michael's eyes, unsure how much he had just noticed of the drama in the house. She had no reason to trust him and so much to trust her daughter.

"If you have lied..." Demona whispered to him and her voice sounded like the hissing of a snake. "I will make you plead for your death for days."

Then she pulled the sword out of his shoulder on which he collapsed, his back still leaning on the wall and went away without turning around again.

Lucifia neared the boy, the only survivor of his family who tried desperately to flee from her, crawling backwards. But Lucifia was unbelievably fast and grabbed him with one claw at his breast holding him up in the air while she used the other claw to show him her sword, which was red from the blood of the boy's father with triples of white, where parts of the brain still hung on it.

"Do you see it?" Lucifia asked softly, nearly affectionately and when the boy didn't answer she drew the sword over his face studying his expression fascinated. Then she noticed the growing spot of liquid on his trousers between the legs.

"Ohhh, haven't your parents taught you at least this in their short existence?" She asked him admonishingly. "Do you know the punishment for this?"

With this, she slowly led her sword deeper until it met the spot and...

"Lucifia." 

The so called turned around and looked on her mother who stood at the door, her own sword drawn and bloody, she had an unreadable expression on her face.

"Come, we go." Demona ordered.

"But..." Lucifia started. "I'm not ready to go yet."

Demona looked on the boy who was totally motionless from the shock. "You are," she noted. "Come, we will glide back to the plain." 

Reluctantly, Lucifia placed the boy back on the earth. 

"I will come back to take you," she whispered to him in his ears and left the crying boy alone with his dead parents.

Lucifia caught up to her mother who had already started to go to the church. They were both aware that they were watched through the windows of the houses, but this bothered neither mother nor daughter, just as it didn't bother them when they passed the body of the dead preacher lying in front of his church.

"Mother, why do we go?" Lucifia asked Demona when they had reached the church. "All was going well."

Demona flinched by these words, remembering the scene in the house. She didn't want to turn around since she knew that she couldn't hide her feelings now.

"Now the humans are in total shock." Demona explained without turning around. "Killing them wouldn't increase the horror they feel. But when we return later, when they have calmed down a bit and after they have seen what we have done." She turned around to her daughter, looking deep in the eyes, which were so much like her own. "Vengeance is something that has to be served cold to taste totally good."

Lucifia respected her mothers view, it seemed as if she was searching herself and finally nodded.

"It seems as if I have a lot still to learn." She noticed.

Demona nodded and discovered the power to smile slightly. "Yes, but I'm here to teach it to you," she explained and laid a claw on her daughter's shoulder. 

"But what if they try to escape?" Lucifia asked cautiously.

"Through the dark woods," Demona asked. "You forget that the humans fear the darkness and when they do... then it will be much easier to track them down there than here in the town. Now let us go back to the plain."

Lucifia nodded and followed her mother climbing the church and gliding back to the plain.

****

11.06.1675; 01:12; The Plain:

Both warriors landed at the centre of the plain, near the place where Shaman's body lay. Looking around on the place they had once called home, Demona did so because she didn't want to turn around to her daughter. 

"What now?" Lucifia asked behind her mother's back.

Demona turned around to her daughter and looked into her eyes. 

"I will search in the cave for leaves we could use." She lied. "Then..." she swallowed. "Can you make a log and take your father's body on it? It is hard I know, but I don't want him to decay more, it is time that he gets his memorial ceremony... with the rest of the clan."

Lucifia nodded. "It is an honor for me to do so." She explained with a slight smile. "I never really saw him as a father while he lived, but now... I will."

Demona hesitated some seconds, avoiding her daughter's eyes. "Back in the town, when you attacked this family," she asked calmly. "Would you have killed that child?" 

For one moment Lucifia just looked deep into her mother's eyes and then she firmly shook her head. "No, I just wanted to frighten him. Why?" She asked with an uncertainty in her voice that Demona knew all too well "Should I have done this?" 

Demona shook her head, a part of her felt ashamed for the mistrust she felt for her daughter while she had trusted that human once again, but since she was here now there was no return.

"No, you've done right." She explained. "I would have done even so..." Demona looked around seeing the crumbled bodies of her former clan... her third who had died in such a way. 

~ She has a right to be angry ~ she reminded herself, ~ by the dragon she has. ~

"I'll back soon." Demona said to her daughter and turned around to go to the cave, but ever feeling her daughter's eyes in her back.

Finally, after a mere few minutes which seemed endless to her, Demona reached the entrance of the cave where she and her mate had spent so many wonderful hours. But this wasn't the time for reminiscing and she didn't want to swell in the memory of happiness, which she knew could never return. She studied the different vessels, bowls and jars to see if she discovered something to proof her mistrust wrong. 

She didn't see anything suspicious even when she noticed that some leaves were missing, even when she could swear that they had still been there when she had checked it the last time.

But Lucifia had said she had been out to collect new leaves so this had been clear from the beginning, or? Perhaps one of them had spilled the leaves, which was no wonder by all that had happened. Still the voices of doubt inside her mind didn't become silent so she went through the cave as fast as she could.

Finally she was there, in a room guarded by four ever watchful statues, guarding the stone table or better yet the two swords on it. Yes they were there, lying untouched, un-needed on the table as weapons against a menace Demona feared was there.

The Angel-swords still lay there like the first time she had seen them, seemingly untouched, unmoved since the night Shaman had allowed her to feel it... or was there? Beside one of the swords, the dust there seemed a bit uneven? Demona saw it, but she didn't know if she had whirled it with the draught she had caused when she entered or not.

It was only allowed to remove the swords from the cave when a new shaman ascended. Demona had feared that they weren't there and condensed the horrible suspicion even more that Lucifia had tried to ascend and something had gone terrible wrong. 

But she hadn't, as this proofed it. Besides, the guards would have killed her if the darkness had claimed her.

Demona sighed.

~ You're becoming paranoid ~ she admonished herself while she turned around and started to leave the cave. 

Sure the preacher hadn't understand that what she had spoken in Latin where his own words, but maybe he had never heard Latin spoken, or somebody else had made the letters on the doors to the rookery... sure there was no reason to not believe what was so obviously.

The fact that she had mistrusted her own daughter made her feel more and more miserable, there had been no reason for such? Everything that Lucifia had said was logical, all she had done understandable and her eyes were so green like her own, so why did Demona still feel such mistrust, why had the last look her daughter had given her made her shudder?

~ Nothing ~ she calmed herself ~ it was the humans, always the humans ~

Suddenly a snarl pulled Demona out of her thoughts and she saw her panther standing in front of the entrance, the green eyes glittering and the black coat reflecting the moonlight. Demona had never felt any telepathic contact with her guardian spirit before, but now she felt the nearly aching urge coming from the spirit.

~ Follow me ~

Demona nodded and rushed on all fours after the spirit, by this she noticed in wonder that they came near to the border of the plain. But the panther didn't stop at the border, but simply ran over it on the air, straight to another rocky plain not far away in the woods, which was not as large or as high as the one where her clan had lived, but seemed still impressive.

Demona didn't rely on the chance that the air would carry her even so and spread her wings to let the wind carry her after the spirit. 

The panther landed on a rock and Demona landed beside it still unsure as to why she had to come here. Then she noticed it, some stones lying around there in an unnatural way. Demona knelt down and studied it, taking one stone piece in her claw and studying it more exactly. She dropped it in shock when she realized that it was part of a snout.

A gargoyle had been smashed here! Even when Demona couldn't say who it was, she knew that the last parts of it remains had been removed.

~ But where to and why? ~ Demona asked herself ~ and what did he want here? ~

She looked around noticing in the back of her mind that the panther had vanished again until she discovered something strange. There was a rock, formed nearly like an altar... and dried blood was pasted on it, floating from the top to the ground.

As fast as she could, Demona ran to the altar investigating it even more.

~ By the dragon let me be wrong ~ she prayed desperately.

Her darkest fears became true since she noticed the even so dried yellow sparkles and the little egg-shell-pieces on the stone.

"No..." She whispered, too shocked to feel even pain or sadness. 

There was a voice in her mind, a voice she didn't want to hear since she knew exactly what it meant

****

09.02.1623

"What ritual?" Demona asked in wonder. Which ritual could give a gargoyle such power?

"To obtain the power of the darkness," Shaman explained. "The person who is controlled by this has to sacrifice an egg... A gargoyle not yet hatched to make the path ready for this power. Has he done so neither magic nor weapons nor even the sun can stop him." 

****

11.06.1675

~ Perhaps she wasn't it ~ she tried to convince herself ~ perhaps... ~

"Hello mother." A sweet voice said.

Demona looked up, seeing her daughter leaning on a tree and studying her with a vicious smile. 

"So you've finally discovered the truth have you?" Lucifia asked, still grinning when her mother didn't find the power to reply. "Oh I really thought I could trick you longer, at least until we had killed some more humans... As you said, I have still so much to learn!"

"How could you?" Demona asked her voice as weak as she felt.

"Oh I think I have to thank you for this," Lucifia responded. "The illusion spells you taught me have served me very well. But now I have no more need for it." She made a strange gesture and suddenly her body seemed to change. Demona observed as her horns, which had formally been so delicate grew to the height of a ram-horn. Her shoulder-spikes grew from each shoulder along with two extra spikes. Then four spikes grew out of her tail and she seemed to grow.

But the most evident change for Demona were her daughter's eyes, they turned from green to black... total black.

"Yes, this is better." Lucifia who had now nothing more in common with Little Panther, noted with a grin. "What do you think of my new appearance?"

Demona dug her claws deep into the rock, crumbling it, ignoring the pain of her claws since the pain in her heart was more powerful.

"Oh don't look so." Lucifia said. "I know now you think you have lost everything, but you are wrong!"

With this, a body emerged out of the shadows of some trees moving slowly and clumsy, but with a certain goal.

Demona stared in horror on the creature coming to the moonlight... It was her mate. In the first second she believed that Lucifia had somehow resuscitated him, but then she looked into his eyes, eyes where dampness showed already the continued process of decaying and she realized that it wasn't him. 

The eyes, which had once shown so much love and warmth, were now icy and full of malice, perfidy and evilness. In one horrifying moment, Demona realized what her daughter had done. She had called a dark spirit to take over the dead body of her mate, a spirit just hungry after death and pain and the warmth of living flesh since its own didn't live.

~ It isn't my mate ~ Demona tried to clam herself, but as much as she said this to herself she saw the body coming nearer and registered every detail on him which she had loved.

And in his arms he held...

Demona believed her heart would stop beating, unable to bear the pain.

In his arms he held a hatchling and Demona knew it was their hatchling. It was too small to survive in the world outside its egg yet it had been pulled out so brutally.

"You have to know I used his egg to gain my powers." Lucifia explained in a conversational tone. "I thought it was fitting to let it in the family like the humans say. And aren't we a nice one?"

Demona registered her daughter's voice just in the background, as all her mind was focused on the hatchling... No! Rather the dead fetus in her mate's corpse's arms. He had her Scottish features even though his skin seemed to be a shade darker than Lucifia's. His hair, which was made out of just a few streaks on the otherwise bald skull, was brown and he seemed lean around his face. 

Demona looked at her dead son and despite all this, a part of her was irrationally happy that he wasn't mutilated like his rookery siblings, he was...

Suddenly the fetus's eyes opened and he looked directly into hers.

Demona wanted to scream, but all she could do was look on her son who slowly moved in his father's arms. He looked up at her and out of his mouth came a sound produced by unready vocal cords, it was a whining and with it he stretched his tiny arms out after his mother.

A part of her wanted to take the creature, which she knew wasn't her son and embrace him, giving him warmth and comfort. Another part of her wanted to just turn around and flee out of this nightmare as far away as she could, but all she could was stood there and stare on the creature, which had been destined to become her son and had been killed by his sister even before he had hatched.

"Oh isn't this sweet?" Lucifia asked sweetly. "He wants his mother! Unfortunately I had to smash his older brother, else this family would be complete" This question was aimed on Demona, but she just stared on her son in shock. 

"Well father," Lucifia said to the Shaman-creature. "I think you should embrace your mate. Wouldn't this be fine?"

On this, the creature started to go slowly but determinedly to his mate, its eyes never left hers.

"Order him to stop." Demona pleaded. "If there is anything..."

"Oh mother!" Lucifia responded laughing, seeing how Shaman came nearer and nearer to his mate. "You wanted to do this, to embrace your beloved one last time and say to him all the things you hadn't a chance to... Come, there has to be something."

Demona ignored her daughter and just looked on the creature, which came nearer and nearer... Nothing could describe the pain she felt by this while she slowly, unconsciously moved her claw to her sword.

He... it was now just two meters away from her and came nearer. Demona could hear it breathing like an animal and studying her with dark lust, then it opened its beak and Demona could smell the scent of decay coming out of it.

She had to control herself not to puke, but then this... this thing said something, which crumbled her soul.

"My love," it was his words spoken out of his beak with a voice Demona recognized as his, but they made her shudder in the depths of her soul.

She looked in his eyes and then in the ones of her son whose unready eyes were so much like his father's and who still stretched his tiny arms after her. She made her decision.

"I'll always love you." Demona said and raised her sword.

With the loudest and most tortured scream of her life, she sunk her sword into her mate again and again and again...

She didn't stop until the creature fell down, she didn't even stop when both creatures stopped breathing. She only stopped when her arm-muscles had no power to raise the sword anymore and when the creatures to her feet had changed into a bloody pulp.

Demona lead her trembling hand to her face to wipe the sweat from it, but when she saw her hand after this she noticed that it was not sweat... It was blood, the blood of her mate and her son.

Demona looked down on herself and noticed that she was totally covered with blood.

One moment she thought she would become crazy.

She looked again on her daughter, tears streaming down her face, realizing once again that she had lost everything, this time through the hand of her own daughter.

"Tisk tisk tisk," Lucifia said, seemingly a bit disappointed. "I had believed you to be of more self control. How the mighty have fallen."

"What do you want?" Demona asked without interest, hate or hope, simply because she didn't know what else to ask.

"Death, destruction and pain," Lucifia replied honestly. "And in the end I want a new order of eternal darkness out of the ashes of this world with me ruling over it."

Lucifia laughed. "But for now, simple satisfaction," she explained and took two swords from her back. 

Demona had no problems to see what her daughter held in her claws, the Angel-swords glowed in a bright blue light. 

"In all the nights when you trained us I thought I would never be able to fulfill your expectations..." Lucifia admitted and threw one sword to her mother. "But now you will see that my skills have improved much from before."

Demona looked down on the sword at her feet. Her tears had stopped, even so the pain in her heart, as she just felt empty and dead with just the dialogue with her daughter kept her going.

"Why?" She asked her daughter. "Why don't you end it here and now? Why do you risk the chance that I might defeat you?"

"Where would the fun be in this?" Lucifia asked. "Besides, I thought you would like it so. You have fought your whole life, why don't you want to end it now?"

She came closer. "You know," Lucifia explained with the Angel-Sword in her claw. "I, like all my rookery siblings, perhaps the whole clan thought you were the greatest warrior of our kind. It's time to see if this is true, isn't it?"

"I will not fight you daughter." Demona said and looked deep into her daughter's black eyes, as black as her soul was now.

"Pity," Lucifia said with a slight sadness in her voice. "Send greetings to father from me."

With this, Lucifia rammed her sword at her mother with all her power and quickness and it seemed as if Demona had just accepted her death. But then, practically at the last second, she took a step to the left, which let the sword cut just the air and then she gave her daughter a kick to her face, which made her stumble backwards.

Slowly, Demona took the sword in her claw while never taking her eyes off of her daughter who slowly touched her nose and laughed when she saw that it bled... dark blood, which was as dark as her eyes.

"Ahhh, so there is still a fighter in you!" Lucifia noticed smiling, a smile which made Demona sick. "Then let's start."

With this, she attacked her mother once again and this time she blocked the attacks without hesitation just to make a counterattack, which Lucifia blocked at once.

This was repeated many times and was mainly a sizing of the opponent since Lucifia had never fought with her mother seriously and Demona had to see that Lucifia's skills had indeed improved very much together with her quickness and strength.

Finally, Demona jumped on the altar and attacked her daughter from above, which she blocked easily and lead a counterattack.

"Finally, some fun!" Lucifia exclaimed happily and forced her mother back with another attack causing her to jump from the altar again. "I mean shattering my clan during the day and slaughtering some helpless human is nice, but nothing about the thrill of a fight."

"Sure." Demona replied and moved slightly backward while her daughter came nearer again.

Lucifia attacked again, but this time her mother took the initiative. She rammed her foot into Lucifia's stomach and knocked the sword out of her daughter's claw with her own sword. 

"It ends." Demona explained and was going to kill her daughter when she suddenly used her tail in a quick movement and knocked the sword out of her mother's hand. 

"Not yet…" Lucifia noted and hit her mother in the face, which made her fly three meters backward. "…But soon."

Demona looked snarling on her daughter and then she looked around to find one of the Angel-swords, but they were out of her reach. 

"Oh we don't need the Angel-swords any more," Lucifia said. "They are nice toys, but a bit too dangerous don't you think so? At least they are able to kill you and I and I think it shouldn't be such between mother and daughter."

Demona looked on her daughter with blood-red eyes, it seemed as if once again the years had claimed their tribute since her face seemed now centuries old, old by death and pain... so much pain.

"Let us try it again!" Lucifia explained and raised her claw. "Fulmeos venite!"

The flash of lightening, coming out of Lucifia's claw hit Demona in the stomach and struck her to the ground, her whole body shaking uncontrollably through the pain. On one night she had felt the same pain when her old teacher the Archmage had tortured her on the night of Malcolm's wedding. Back then, the old leader had saved her from her foe, but now she had to deal with this alone.

Still trembling, she brought herself to her feet and looked angrily on her daughter.

"Now you see I've not just improved my fighting skills." Lucifia explained with a smile. "You really have no idea what magical power I can handle now and all because you taught me the basic skills!"

"I am still the greatest mage here!" Demona snarled and spoke her own spell. "Fulmeos magnos venite!" 

This spell she cast was from a mistake she had made long ago and was proof of just how dangerous magic could be in untrained claws. When she had still been the apprentice of the Archmage, she had tried to copy the spell he had used to summon large lightening out of his hands, which could bring down every opponent. 

*Fulmeos maximus venite.* had been the spell, unfortunately her thoughts had been clouded by her green skinned rookery brother and their relationship, which had become more and more stressed since she had to spent nearly all her free time to help the Archmage.

Such thoughts had diverted Demona and she had said *Fulmeos magnos venite* instead and created a new spell. Instead of creating lightening, she had created a ball of fire and in her surprise she had thrown it away too late. 

The explosion was damned hard and left some bruises and scratches on her skin, something she had explained to her rookery brother that she had fallen during some training in the rocks. This was a lie that he hadn't believed even though he hadn't said so, and which had enlarged the drift between them even more. Demona's bad conscience had just been tendered by the fact that she had not even told the Archmage about her discovery since she didn't want to let him know that she had trained secretly without his permission.

The fireball she threw on her daughter was deadly no doubt, but even though it killed a part of her she knew there was no choice, if she didn't stop her then she would easily kill the whole world... all gargoyle clans left included.

The fireball hit Lucifia in the stomach and exploded with a large shockwave, which made Demona's hair fly backwards and didn't allow her to see anything. When the dust had settled, Demona saw in shock how Lucifia stood up and looked down on herself. There was a wound in her stomach, not as large as Demona had thought and even more shocking was that the wound closed right before her eyes... Lucifia's healing abilities were stronger than her own.

"Oh mother!" Lucifia said smiling while her wound closed. "Your magic can't stop me. _You_ can't stop me..."

Demona looked angrily on her daughter trying to ban the despair out of her eyes, she knew she couldn't win as her energy was low already and she had no help... she was alone.

*My love*

Demona hesitated. ~ That voice ~ 

Suddenly, she knew what she had to do. Slowly, she grabbed the bag at her belt, which still had some dried leaves and emptied them on to the earth, kneeling before them.

"Burn!" She commanded together with a movement of her claw and the leaves started burning to secrete a strange, but at the same time a good smelling scent, helping her to let her open a gate to the world of limbo.

"Who do you want to call?" Lucifia asked smiling on her mother's attempt. "I've defeated the guardian spirit, the perhaps greatest ever called spirit, so why do you think you alone could do anything?"

Demona looked up to her daughter. "I alone can't defeat you." She admitted.

Suddenly her eyes changed, they became totally white and Lucifia believed that she was studied not by one, but many out of them. 

"But WE will." Demona explained, her voice a combination out of dozens, from the voices of elders to the ones of hatchlings and even of babies.

Lucifia realized what her mother had done. "Ah so you've called the ghosts of our old clan..." She said with a laugh. "Always good for a surprise mother, this is the reason why I let you live. But don't think this gives you a chance, as I am still the most powerful being on the planet. You can't win." 

"WE will." The creature who was not, or not just, Demona anymore replied.

With these words, something touched Lucifia's feet and when she looked down she noticed with surprise that climbers were growing unnaturally fast around her feet. 

"Is this all you can do?" Lucifia asked contemptuous while the climbers grew around her arms. With a battle cry and seemingly not much effort, she freed herself of them and tore them to little pieces. "Well if you want to do it on this level."

With this, Lucifia held up her arms and at once a storm started like the area hadn't seen before. Trees broke like matches while the lightening set parts of the wood in flame and the wind made it hard for the clan not to hold herself on her feet. Suddenly, a flying branch hit her in the stomach and made her fly from the plain into the sky where she fought with the winds for control of her flight, which was a hard thing to do even with all the experiences of the clan together.

Lucifia laughed madly. "A bit windy isn't it?"

Demona and all the gone clan with her looked angrily on the creature they had once called daughter and sister and what was now nothing more than a creature of darkness. Alone with the power of their melted minds they guided a part of the force Lucifia had summoned to a new goal...

The lightening hit Lucifia totally off guard. She screamed in pain and lost control over the storm, on which it stopped and the clan was able to land again. 

Lucifia looked to her mother in total fury, a part of her hair was burning and her skin steamed. 

"You will suffer for this!" She promised breathing heavily. "You all will regret that you didn't stay in the realm of death!"

With this, Lucifia cut the palm of her claw and allowed her black blood to spill on the earth. She then spoke some unholy words and the earth started to shake while the blood seeped in. Then she ran to a fire stroked by the lightening and let a part of her blood fall in too, on which the fire seemed to enlarge. At last she dropped the blood into the bloody pulp, which had once been her father and her little brother, on which it suddenly shook and started to put itself together.

Finally, beside Lucifia were three creatures to serve their master in her fight. A creature made of rock, barely of humanoid shape and next to it a creature made of flames even so vaguely humanoid and the last one a creature made of flesh, barely similar to a gargoyle and made of two corpses.

"What do you have against my companions here?" Lucifia asked her former clan, in the form of her mother. "They are nice aren't th...."

Suddenly, something collided with her and threw her back against the altar her head smashing onto it, which crumbled on this. When she stood up she registered a form over her and other forms attacking her summoned creatures... 

They were the Angel-statues of the cave, seemingly more than simple statues now, and the one before her drew its sword. 

"Oh how clever, bringing ghosts to this shell." Lucifia said laughing while getting out of the swords way. "But they are still just statues of the original, not even a shadow of their power." With this, she kicked the statue's leg and crumbled it before she leaped on the falling statue and crumbled the rest of it with hard blows. 

The other three Angel-statues who had defeated their opponents with ease now attacked Lucifia, but there was no doubt that would win and after just three minutes, just Lucifia and a mass of rubble were on the plain.

"This was easy, but..." She stopped when she registered that her feet were sinking and when she looked down she realized that the attack of the Angel-statues had been a distraction, to prevent her from realizing what her former clan was really doing and now it was too late.

Slowly, Lucifia sunk down into the stone which had become liquid and looked angrily on the clan in the shell of her mother.

"What are you doing?" She demanded, her legs sinking deeper in the rock, even when she knew the answer. It was just the typical question asked in such situations.

"WE imprison you for your crimes." The clan answered through Demona's mouth. "You who once were OUR sister and daughter will no longer be allowed to bring pain to the world and infect it with your evil; the earth itself will take care of this. This is the end of your evilness."

"No it is not and you know it... mother!" Lucifia said while her arms started to sink into the rock already, but her eyes locked onto her mother's. Even when now dozens of gargoyle-souls were in this, she knew that she saw the one of her mother. "It hasn't ended, do you hear me mother?" She asked while she sunk until her breast into the rock "It hasn't ended yet, I will..." She sunk until her head sank into the rock and the clan couldn't hear the last words... It didn't matter.

The room shook and glowed some moments in unearthly blue light, as a sign that holy energy floated through it and made it into a real prison for the creature it held. Then it stopped and silence lay on the world, as if it would be unsure if it had truly ended. Finally the clan landed and looked around with white eyes and realized that the evil had been stopped for now. 

Slowly the white in Demona's eyes faded and left her eyes normal again, as a sign that just a lonely, tortured soul inhabited this body now. Tears were streaming down her face, but her eyes didn't look in this world, but saw the world of limbo.

There were all gathered, the whole clan who had been slaughtered by her daughter, her mate standing in front of them. He held their son, the fetus who hadn't hatched and had been used by his sister so cruelly, but this time it was different. The hatchling seemed vital, the eyes glittering lovingly and intelligently, not so dark and evil like his dark twin in the world of living.

When she looked around she saw his unhatched siblings in the arms of the clan elders and the hatchlings of the generation above them. They all seemed happy and looked on Demona with love of a sort, which warmed her heart.

Then, one by one, they turned around and seemingly went away from the world of twilight to the realm of death. Finally, just Shaman with his son in his arms stayed by her. 

He came closer to his kneeling mate and softly stroked her red hair. Then he embraced her softly still with their son in his arm and looked deep into her emerald-green eyes.

"Remember that I'll always love you." He said and then went out of his mate's embrace and started to go, vanishing into the fog.

"Don't leave me." Demona pleaded, her voice as weak and as powerless as she felt. She wanted to go after him and hold him forever in her arms, but she hadn't the power to do this.

"Never my love," his voice answered through the fog. "I'll be always in you heart... we all will."

With this, he was gone and slowly the world of limbo vanished to be replaced by the world of living. Yes, she was back in the world of living again, but it was the world of death for her now. Her whole clan gone, her daughter... 

She shuddered and it seemed to her as if she could hear her daughter through all this rock, but she was sure it was just the wind and the sound of burning wood. A time, she didn't know how long she had simply knelt there, staring ahead without really seeing anything than the emptiness in her heart.

This loneliness was more painful than Demona had felt ever before. In the moments before, it had been the contrary, as she had been many, united with her clan like she had never known before by being connected with their souls, but now she was just alone.

Then she saw something glittering on the earth, just in the reach of her arms. It were the Angel-swords, lying through fate or pure change directly before her and an idea came into her mind. She took one sword in her claw and laid the tip of the blade on the point of her breast where she felt her heart beating. 

It was so easy she knew. One fast push and it would end and she would be reunited with all her clans who had been killed before, with all them she loved. Demona thought of Macbeth, he would surely like it and perhaps he would die himself, perhaps the spell would end and he would age again, at last it would end.

One push… Oh how she wanted it, to end the pain in her heart. But she couldn't, her claws were shaken by the tension she felt and she couldn't, she couldn't end her life like this, as it was against all she had learned from her teacher, all she was.

She wouldn't let Lucifia win.... She wouldn't let the humans win.

The humans had killed Shaman and so forced Lucifia to become what she had become, the humans had betrayed her, always the humans.

****

11.06.1675; 03:07; The town:

Michael stood there, at the stone where the people of the town had always called the gargoyles to come help them and would do so never again. He himself would need help now. A woman who was thankful for him that he had *expelled* the demons, had taken care of his wound at his shoulder where Demona had stabbed the sword through and at the stomach where her claws had left some deep scratches. But it wasn't half of the art of medicine that Demona and Shaman had used, not even a quarter. Suddenly he heard the flush of wings above him and he looked up to see Demona landing in front of him.

The sight of his old friend allowed him to smile, despite all what had happened in this night and what she had done to him. He had heard the unearthly sounds from the woods and feared that she might have been hurt, but obviously it wasn't so. 

Then he looked into her face and knew that he was wrong. She was hurt, but deeper than any blade could cut. Michael alike with the most of the town's people had ever wondered why she didn't age like her mate and some whispered 'dark magic', but now she had aged. Her face seemed old, haggard and her eyes were icy, steeled of the pain she had to endure. A part in Michael wanted to hold his old friend, to comfort her and to ease her pain, but the sparkle in her eyes made clear that she wouldn't allow that.

"You were right. It wasn't the humans from the town." Demona said coldly. "My daughter has killed our clan."

Michael's eyes grew big. "Why?"

"She was... is infected by the evil." Demona explained. "She tried a ritual to make her into a full Shaman and failed with this result." Now she looked directly into his eyes and her own burned like hellfire. "She did so because the Hunter and the men of this town killed my mate and prevented me from reaching the plain in time!!!"

This was the time when Michael noticed the two odd looking swords at Demona's belt and when he asked himself if he had really a good reason to be happy that she was back.

"Demona listen..." Michael pleaded just to be stopped by her.

"NO, YOU WILL LISTEN!" She snarled angrily and knew that the other humans in the town, in their houses which gave them a feeling of false security, were listening, too. 

"I have imprisoned her." She explained. "In the rock in the wood north of what was my clan's home and you human, you all who caused this will guard her from now on and so will your children and your children's children until the end of time." This was no asking, this was an order. "If the rock is broken, if she is freed then nothing will be safe anymore, neither my kind nor your puny race, do you understand?" 

Michael nodded. "I swear I will. And I will convince the others to do so too. She will never flee."

Demona looked on him with contempt and he knew that she didn't believe him... wouldn't do so ever again. Finally she turned around and started to climb up a house.

"Where will you go now?" He asked her as sympathetic as he could. 

Demona didn't even turn around when she answered. 

"Away from here of course, what else can I do?" She answered not hiding her bitterness and full of hatred she answered. "You humans have taken from me everything I ever had that was happiness in my life. I'll never forgive you and I'll never give you another chance to do so."

With this, she leapt into the night and Michael followed with his eyes until she vanished. 


	4. Epilogue

****

09.08.98; 02:53; Castle Wyvern, Great Hall:

They could have cut the silence in the air with a knife. Everybody was shocked of what they had heard of the unbelievable cruelty and evilness of this creature and had all agreed to remain silent. They were lucky that Demona had killed her so fast.

Diomedes, like some of his siblings, felt pity for his red-haired sister, a pity which completely deleted the anger he had felt for her because of what she had done to him and the clan. 

~ All this years ~ he thought while he looked at her ~ all this death... how were you able to keep at last a bit of your sanity? ~

But Demona didn't show if she still felt pain from this, her face stayed even and her eyes icy.

"Have you brought them back already sister?" Diomedes asked her, but Demona shook her head and laughed bitterly.

"No and I... nobody can." She answered and now she couldn't hide the pain in her eyes.

"But lass," Hudson said. "They were shattered and not killed while they were flesh and blood so it should be easy, I mean you have done it before."

"Indeed old soldier," Demona replied thoughtfully not noticing that this name she used for Hudson made his mate glare on her. "But these time I knew that they were dead. I was sure." 

"Because you had felt them... " Asrial noted. "Because they were with you and gave you the strength to defeat Lucifia... to imprison her."

Demona nodded, her face unmoved again. "Yes, that was it," she explained. "I felt every single soul of them was one with them, even with the souls of the eggs. There is no way."

"And if you would have tried it?" Angela asked her mother, "you simply would have changed the statues?" 

Demona looked deep into her daughter's eyes and Angela realised that her mother had thought about this, for a long time perhaps.

"To be honest, I don't know," Demona answered. "I would have crossed the line, would have broken what I knew was reality. I would have let someone live whom I know couldn't live, at least not in my reality. Perhaps the universe would have created a new timeline to replace the old or perhaps it would have destroyed itself? I didn't want to try it and I think everybody here agrees with this."

Agreeing murmurs came from the clan, as nobody had any interest to make the test.

"What about us and the other clans you brought back?" Ajax asked confused and Demona reminded him that he wasn't the most creative head in the clan.

"Let me explain it so," Demona began anew. "How large is the possibility that it is that you weren't smashed by the Vikings or by the English, but your stone-double created by a visitor of a future like this. Low?" She saw some clan-members nodding. "Well low indeed, but not impossible at least since nobody could proof the opposite and I didn't see you in the world of limbo. As long as there is no proof of the opposite then anything is possible. But if you want to change or better betray the timeline you have then always take care for this."

"We have," Goliath replied. "We brought back the eggs of a clan in the woods of Caledonian in Scotland, which were supposed to be destroyed by a mud-avalanche." He explained and ignored the slightly disapproving look in Deborah's face. This was a sign of his new trust in Demona, to let her know the location of one other clan and they all knew it, but Demona simply nodded. "The leader told me that she herself had held an eggshell, which had been dug out of the mud, so we asked another clan to give us the eggshells they still had to replace those. On this way our interpretation of history was possible."

Demona nodded, trying to hide a smirk. She knew that Goliath would recognise the possibilities of the Phoenix Gate, at least after she had shown him how too. She had no doubt that he had already brought some more clans back, at least in Scotland, Lothian or the destroyed Welsh clans that they had heard of perhaps. There was no hurry as he had all the time in the world.

~ He is no fool ~ Demona thought ~ at least in those things. ~

"You won't have such problems with clans you didn't know," Demona replied. "You can simply take the eggs instead of replacing them." 

Goliath looked in her in wonder. "What do you mean?" 

"Back in Moray," Demona explained. "I saw the eggs shattered, the same which lay now here in the rookery. I thought for a long time that I couldn't bring them back. But then I allowed them to be cloned by Sevarius from samples, which I had taken from them and replaced them in the night before the massacre."

"Clones?" Angela asked shocked. "You let them kill clones instead?"

"Soulless copies," Demona explained emotionlessly, ignoring the shocked views of some of her siblings who knew the meaning of this word. "Simple flesh... nothing which ever lived or would live." She looked to Desdemona and Othello. "Like the bodies Sevarius made for you with my instructions." 

"Couldn't we just do the same again?" Brooklyn asked with a look to Demona. "I mean, couldn't you replace the ones who were supposed to be dead through soulless clones?" 

Demona shook her head. "No, not all," she replied. "When you miss a gargoyle and discover him later dead in the woods killed by something natural then yes. But if you see him dying in the battle or on the death bed then there is no possibility for such... at least nothing if you were 100 percent sure of it."

"And what about me then?" Deborah asked her former pupil angrily. "Like I've heard, I fought in the battle and died later from a wound caused by it, but seemingly I haven't. Tell me you faker, how have you betrayed the time then?" 

Demona noticed that her teacher laid a special pronunciation on the word *betrayed* but chose to ignore it. 

"Once, I killed a mage and discovered amongst many other things three scrolls in his lab." Demona explained. "They were illusion spells, but of a sort I had never seen before. Bounded on these scrolls they resisted every one of my tries to copy it. The scrolls allowed the user to copy a person completely, not just with a mere illusion without matter, but a real copy which seems as living as the original and follow the ways of the original. The only problem is that the copy vanishes after a day and the scrolls had been destroyed after I used them for you, Valejan.... The leader of the Paris Clan and his mate."

She sighed shortly. "On this way, if you know that the person disappears shortly after this or don't know the opposite, you can use it on this way. Even when I doubt that these spells were ever supposed to be used so. It didn't seem to be his magic, but which he had stolen or bought somewhere."

"Pity that you killed him," Deborah noted sarcastically. "Else you would perhaps have known where they came from and would have been able to bring more people back."

Demona responded this criticism with a slight snarl and stood up while leaning on the desk to look her old teacher directly into her eyes.

"He captured me… And killed me to use parts of my body for his magical experiments." She explained, her eyes flashing red. "I had no intention for a talk between sorcerers." 

Deborah, despite the warning looks of her mate, had no intention to stay down and stood up even so to throw her face against Demona's until there was just a few centimetres that separated them.

"You have no respect of life have you?" Deborah asked angrily. 

"I have no mercy for my enemies." Demona responded with a slight smile.

"Enemies?!" Deborah asked angrily, her eyes blazing red. "You call some humans who tried to defend their families in the town, all the humans who died because of the massacre in Wyvern, your enemies?!" 

There were many murmurs in the hall, as this was definitely going onto dangerous territory. Angela stood up and lay a claw on her mother's shoulder if just to stop her from attacking her old teacher and Hudson did the same with his mate.

Goliath saw this even so. He had no intention to let this escalate especially since they knew now what they wanted to know.

"That is enough Deborah," he ordered. "She... "

"Yes I do." Demona replied looking deep into her old teacher's eyes while she dug her claws into the wood of the table. "The humans in the town betrayed us to the Hunter, they were responsible for my mate's death and ultimately even so for what had happened to my daughter and my clan. The humans of Wyvern... " A devilish grin came across her face. "The only thing I regret is that I didn't see the Vikings slaughter them all." 

Angela took her claw from her mother's shoulder, as if she had just touch fire. She and the whole clan looked in shock on her except Deborah who just looked on her with contempt.

"I'm constantly asking myself where you take this self-righteousness," she said more to herself than to Demona. "You stand here and explain us how lucky you are about their death..." 

"Yes, and?" Demona asked even though she knew what Deborah meant. 

"**THEY WERE OUR ALLIES!!!**" Deborah screamed in rage into Demona's face and Shade, who disliked the way Deborah spoke to her master growled on this on her.

"ALLIES?" Demona asked, laughing sarcastically. "When you have those kind of people for allies then you need no enemies! They treated us like dirt only good enough to defend them, but not good enough to share the rooms of the castle with them or to give us one good word. Why should I have been loyal to them?"

"Because we protected them during the night and they us during the day," Deborah explained like she had ever explained it to Demona and her siblings long before. "Remember?"

"They didn't protect us, but simply didn't shatter us during the day." Demona responded on this. "Even when they would have liked to do so, as I know."

"What do you mean?" Deborah asked, her voice was icy but Demona sensed the slight insecurity in her old teacher's voice, as if she feared that there was a part of the story she didn't know… and she was right.

She threw a short look to Hudson who had a warning glance in his eyes and then to Goliath who kept his usual stoic pose, but Demona knew him well and sensed the small signals of his body, which showed how strained he truly was.

~ He has all the more reason to ~ she thought, remembering all too well.

****

16.10.988; 21:32; Castle Wyvern, Window of the Chapel:

Goliath, leader of the Wyvern-clan since four years and Angel, his mate since thirteen years, which were for him were the luckiest years of his life and even so his second in command since three years, stood in front of the window and looked down in the inner chamber.

There, bared on a bier before the altar, lay Prince Malcolm the former ruler of Wyvern and a symbol for peace and stability in the country. He was clothed in his finest clothes, his sword on his breast and his crown on his head, but the signs of death like his pale face and motionless were evident. 

His face showed more than the signs of death, it was lean and its deep lines showed of a hard life. During the last morning, Malcolm had died of influenza, which had ended four years of constant illness in which he had become weaker and weaker. 

It was a tragic irony that they stood here now again, where they had sworn each other their eternal love while down in the chapel Malcolm had done the same to his wife Elena. It had been the greatest night in her lives, full of hope of the future despite what her older self had shown her, but now she felt all her hope vanishing like the life had vanished out of Malcolm's body.

"This is the end of the alliance between us and the humans," Angel noted. "With her father's death, the Princess will no longer be stopped to expel us from here."

Goliath frowned at the pessimistic words of his mate and laid a claw on her shoulder. 

"My Angel, we can't be sure of this." He tried to assure her. "Yes the Princess dislikes us, but... "

"She *hates* us my love." Angel replied and looked deep into her mate's eyes. "I see this every time she looks on us. She blames us for what the Archmage did to her father and the churchmen even feed this hate by telling her that we are demons or soulless animals." She shook her head. "When she has free hand now, she will surely do what the churchmen demands and… "

Goliath enfolded his wings over his love's body and softly stroked her hair. 

"She won't," he assured her. "Remember, she practically reigned on the place of her father the last two years and hasn't harmed us."

Angel leaned her head against her love's broad chest and wished that she could believe his words and live in this rare moment they had for themselves, a time of pure happiness. But she couldn't, her mind and her duty as second demanded other things. Besides, there was her little egg now lying in the clan's rookery and her heart ached when she thought where it had to hatch.

"Yes, but he still lived and could tender her," Angel explained. "Now she will reign alone."

"And such she will want to honour her father's memorial and follow his path," Goliath responded. "Prince Malcolm has forever been a friend of our clan and a loyal ally. She wouldn't bring shame on him by breaking with this politic, especially not in the days after his death."

Angel nodded slightly. She had less faith in the respect of the humans for their dead, but she knew that there was no other way. She had even lesser faith in the humans' trustworthiness as well. The Archmage had taught her so, when he had ended her apprenticeship in such a cruel way. She still remembered the pain his spell had brought her and how it could have been worse if the old leader hadn't have helped her.

Sensing the trouble his mate still felt, her mate softly took her chin and lead her face to his.

"We must have faith in the humans," Goliath said. "Else there is no alliance."

Angel nodded. She knew he was right and that she had to trust in the future despite all her future self had shown her. Yet, when she looked on her love she noticed that he had grown even more since they had sworn their love, becoming more and more similar to the future self she had seen that night, and she herself...

~ I will never be like her! ~ She swore to herself and her mate angrily. ~ Never. ~

"Come, the time has come to honour him," Goliath explained and removed his embrace to go to the border of the roof until he noticed his mate's hesitation. "Will you come?"

Angel nodded and followed her mate gliding to the gates of the chapel. There the old mentor waited already on them like what had been arranged. Angel sighed, as the old soldier had taken the news of Malcolm's death much harder than any other gargoyle and maybe even harder than any other humans besides the Princess had. She could still see the pain in his eyes and asked herself when he would finally stop blaming himself that he hadn't been able to protect the prince from the poisoned dart. 

The dart hadn't killed him since the Magus, as he was called now, was able to create an antidote with the help of the Grimorum Arcanorum that she, her love and the old leader had brought back. Unfortunately, the Magus had not been fully capable of magic yet and so the antidote had been too weak to cure the illness completely and left Malcolm vulnerable to the illnesses to come. 

"Leader, Second." Hudson greeted, nodding to them both.

"Mentor," Goliath responded with the greatest respect.

"Elder," Demona greeted not with less respect but more distance than her mate did. 

She liked and respected the former leader despite the fact that she had forced Goliath to replace him, but for Angel her only mentor had just been his mate.

"Shall we really do this?" Angel asked both males. "I mean, we have honoured his memorial in the clan already, taking absent at his corpse is a human custom."

"Aye," the mentor agreed. "But he was a human and so we should honour him after his customs too."

"The Princess won't allow this," Angel noted. 

"She won't discover it," Goliath replied. "The princess sleeps now. But I understand if you don't want to come with us."

Angel sighed and shook her head. "No," she said. "Where you both go so will I go, it is my duty and besides... " She swallowed. "He was a good ruler and a friend of our kind."

There was no more to be said and so the three gargoyles slowly walked into the chapel up to the dead prince's corpse.

They stood there for some time just looking on the corpse. They knew that unlike their own custom the humans gave their dead over to the earth and made graves for them instead of handing them over to the sea. So they could theoretically come to the grave later on to honour him. But this was more personal than the gargoyle custom. Besides, there were rumours that he would be buried in his brother's kingdom where the rest of his family were laid.

The old gargoyle looked on his friend and was going to say something when...

"What are you doing here monsters?" A small but authorial voice demanded furiously.

The three gargoyles turned around to see the Princess standing at the gate of the chapel along with the Magus who had the Grimorum Arcanorum in his hands and two guards in full armour beside her.

When Angel looked onto the Princess, she couldn't do anything but smile silently since she forgot so easily that the Princess was nothing but a child in her twelve years. Indeed, the young warriors of the rookery after hers with their 30 years and a biological age of 15 were older than the princess even though they weren't much matured, but since they lived in peaceful times then there was no need for such.

"Princess, we wanted to honour your father." Mentor started.

"You are responsible for his death so you have no right to be here." She explained in an angry voice full of contempt, not noticing the slight wincing of the old gargoyle. "Not one of your beasts have any right to be here. OUT!" 

"We just... " Angel started but the child cut her off. 

"You desecrate his corpse and his memorial with just your presence, now get out before I order the guards to move you." The Princess ordered. 

Angel wanted to say more, but her mate lay a claw on her shoulder.

"No need to do so, we'll go." Goliath said and led them out from under the hateful eyes of the princess and the guards, out of the chapel.

"I just wish I could lay her over my knee and give that brat what she deserves!" Angel exclaimed angrily. 

Goliath wanted to say something to calm his mate and second in command down, but before he could do so, the Mentor simply walked away leaving his leader and his second behind.

"He shouldn't take this so hard," Angel noticed.

"I agree, but he does," Goliath explained crossing his arms. "Remember that Malcolm was not just our ally but his friend, and having his daughter accuse him of being responsible for his death must stab his heart."

Angel sighed. "Why must we follow her?" She asked frustrated. "I mean, she is only a child and she has never given us a slight bit of respect!"

"We can't choose whom the humans see as their leader my Angel," he started. "But remember, like you said she is but a child and her... _views,_ will change as she grows older." 

Sensing the trouble still lying in his mate's heart, he embraced her and laid his wings around her delicate body.

"My love, we must have patience and be strong in the time to come," he explained. "She fears us now, but with the time when we show her that we are no beasts, she will learn to live with us and maybe even respect us." 

"Do you truly think so?" Angel asked her love who gave her one of his rarest smiles.

"I know," he said honestly. "But I'll need your help."

Angel smiled and nodded, as her doubts for now were swept away by her mate's words.

"Ever as mate and as second," she explained and said out of her whole heart. "We are one." With this, the pair swelled in some more moments in this simple happiness.

****

17.10.988; 20:12; Castle Wyvern, the highest tower:

With a roar, Goliath the mighty leader of the Wyvern Clan freed himself of the stone shell, but this time watched by two interested eyes. Goliath felt it and turned around to see the Captain of the guard standing there and studying him with serious eyes.

"Captain" he greeted friendly, but the captain simply nodded. 

"Goliath, we need to talk," he started at once and from the tone of the captain's voice, Goliath knew at once that it was an unfriendly topic.

"What has happened?" Goliath asked while he climbed from his perch.

"Princess Katherine... " The Captain started, but was stopped by another voice from his back.

"What has she done?" Angel asked while coming up the steps with Mentor at her back.

The Captain looked to Goliath with a sort of worry and Goliath understood.

"Whatever I have to know, my second and my mentor shall know even so." He explained and the Captain nodded.

"Goliath, as your friend and friend of your clan, I think it is my duty to inform you what the princess intended to do yesterday." He explained and noticed how Goliath set his usual stoic pose, to prepare himself for what would come while the Captain noticed the female tensing her muscles. "She ordered me to have you and your clan shattered through my soldiers." 

Just the short growl and his closed eyes showed how shocked Goliath was, but his mate snarled out loudly with her eyes blazing red. As for the old mentor, he stayed calm not showing any signs of his own feelings, being experienced in such things.

"I managed to stop her from this," the captain added at once. "I explained to her again that we need you to defend the castle, that you have ever been loyal allies to her father and that she would dishonour his memorial if she did so. This convinced her in the end and I don't think she will think about thus again in the next time, but I think you should know this."

Goliath nodded, seemingly hit by this news. "Thank you in my name and the name of the clan," he said weakly, looking on him.

The Captain nodded. "What will you do now?" He asked.

Goliath sighed and looked to his second. "What do you think my Angel?" 

"We should leave them, go back to the caves where our clan has lived before," she explained, barely able to calm her anger. "This proved that we can't trust her... what if when she won't let herself be stopped next time?"

"And what do you think old friend?" Goliath asked. 

"Well leader, it is your decision in the end." He explained. "But where would we go when we leave? The eggs are just laid. This means we need a secure place and the caves are in the reach of the humans, even when we close the hole. Besides, there are more humans in this area than ever before so there wouldn't be any secure place for us." He sighed. "The Princess was upset last night, understandable as it was so shortly after her father's death, with time she will calm down."

Angel didn't really listen, as her mind was away in a time thirteen years ago.

She was there amongst the shattered remains of her clan in a time she didn't know of, her future self and the one of her love seemingly enemies and before her... she still couldn't believe what she had seen. Her love was stone by night and she had no idea what could have happened. 

Her future self had told her that the humans did this and she knew... knew very well that there was a spell in the Grimorum Arcanorum and others in other magical books, which were able to change gargoyles and human alike permanently into stone. 

~ The Princess could order the Magus to cast this spell on us while we sit on our perches to rest ~ Angel thought and shuddered. 

__

'Do not worry,' the older Goliath had assured. _'Do not look or wait for this catastrophe.'_

"We will stand," Goliath ordered. "We must have faith in the humans... " And with a look to the Captain, he added. "And as long as we have at least one true friend amongst them, I will have faith."

The Captain nodded on this praise. "I'll always be there to help you."

Angel looked on the Captain as if she saw this human for the first time, maybe... no sure this was the only human friend they had now and this made her angry.

__

'Live in the moment.' The future Goliath had said. _'Attend the petty jealousies and angers that prey upon your heart.'_

"Will you tell your clan?" The Captain asked. "They have at least the right to know of the danger they live in." 

"I agree," Angel said. "Everybody has to decide him or herself if they want to take this risk."

"Lass, don't forget that we have to decide thus as a clan together when we don't want to split." Mentor intervened. "And when we do, especially with this atmosphere in the clan, there is no doubt that they will decide to break the alliance and leave the castle."

~ I know old soldier ~ Angel thought bitterly ~ because it is the only right decision... and haven't you done so already once? ~

__

'Fortify yourself with love and trust,' the other Goliath said. _'And you need not fear this future.'_

"He is right," Goliath explained. "Until the alliance shall exist further, we can't tell it to the rest of the clan." 

Angel looked unbelievably on her love as this was against the clan's tradition. Even when the leader decided in the end, the clan had to know about all the important facts.

Goliath looked around. "I ask you to keep this a secret."

The Mentor and the Captain nodded under his view, but his Angel and Second in command just looked on him with unreadable eyes.

"My Angel?" Goliath asked finally.

__

'But most of all, fulfil the vows of love you make,' the older Goliath had told her. _'For they can surely save you.'_

Angel looked deep into her mate and leader's eyes, for this was not just a simple question but a question if she trusted his judgement and him.

"You have my oath," she explained calmly and Goliath nodded, ignoring the slight irritation he felt.

"Well, I think to not make the others suspicious," Goliath explained. "We should go now to our duties."

Mentor and the Captain nodded and went down the steps. Angel meanwhile just looked on her mate, her own words coming to her mind

__

'I shall.' Young Angel swore, unaware of how hard it would become to hold it. _'You have my oath.'_

Goliath had already jumped back on his perch when he noticed that his mate was still studying him with concentrated eyes.

"Is something wrong my Angel?" Her love asked her and Angel shook her head.

"No my love," she explained half hearty and went down the steps so that he wouldn't be unaware of the burden she felt on her heart. "I'll see you later."

~ He has my oath ~ Angel thought ~ and I will hold it, I will. ~

**09.08.98; 03:13; Castle Wyvern, Great Hall:**

Demona studied her former mate and she knew that he was thinking exactly the same thing that she did.

~ He knows that I could deal him a blow he wouldn't recover so fast from, ~ Demona thought. 

Then she looked to Kronos, in his eyes she saw the hunger of a vulture and doubtless he would use this information to challenge Goliath at the post of the leader.

"What does she mean?" Kronos asked.

"She means..." Goliath started and Demona knew that he was going to say the truth.

~ Damned fool ~

"I mean," Demona interrupted him, "that the humans would have gladly killed us. They didn't leave any doubt by this when they talked to each other or made fun of us... No, they didn't deserve our loyalty."

"This is no reason to kill them all." Diomedes noted.

"No, but to refuse them our protection yes," Demona explained. "And you know how well they defended themselves against the Vikings the night before."

"You had no right to decide this!" Goliath told his former second angrily, but at the same time in his eyes shone a bit of gratitude for holding onto their oath.

"If I would have told you the plan... " Demona snarled. "I and the Captain. If we would have come to you and told you about it, would you have considered it?" 

"You didn't." Goliath said while trying to calm himself as his eyes glared white. Thinking back to the first time when he heard of her betrayal, he felt how fresh the pain was. "You both chose to betray me behind my back instead. You, my mate and second and the Captain whom I called my friend... "

Demona had had enough of this, with red blazing eyes she stood up from her chair and despite the arm of her daughter who tried to hold her back she went up in front of her ex-mate and ex-leader. 

"Would you have considered it?" She repeated, looking angrily in his eyes, asking a question that she knew the answer to already. 

Goliath looked on Demona trying to stop a growl from his throat. He ignored Elisa's hand on his tensed muscles, ready to break stone, since in this moment there were just he and Demona while the others stayed witness to this little drama.

He had hoped that she would regret it or at least say that she wouldn't repeat it. But now she stood before him, proud and angry and he knew that she had learned nothing and this made him angry beyond words.

"You wouldn't have even listened to us... " Demona noted, full of contempt. 

"**THIS WAS BEYOND ANY CONSIDERATION!**" Goliath screamed at her, crushing his claws down on the table so hard that it nearly broke. 

This was enough for Shade, who had stayed at the former seat of her master. The Gargbeast jumped, growling and with red-blazing eyes, to Demona's side, ready to protect her master from any attack of this male gargoyle. 

Bronx meanwhile, even so growling but with white-blazing eyes, jumped to his clan leaders side, since he had learned in the last years that this one who now threatened his master wasn't clan and brought danger.

The other Gargbeasts, a large yellow one which had been named Argus amongst them, looked unsure on this this scene since they knew both as clan, even when the female hadn't been there some time. They couldn't see the reason why these two were close to attack each other and had no special reason to help one of them.

It was silent now in the room besides of the growling of both beasts, and everybody including David and Fox Xanatos and Owen alike looked on Goliath surprised by his sudden outburst. Only Demona wasn't surprised, as she knew him very well.

Meanwhile, Goliath had calmed down and managed to stop his eyes from glowing and let his breath become calmer. It hurt still, as he knew it always would partly, but he wouldn't let this pain rule him, not in front of the clan and especially not in front of her.

"We had sworn with our honor to protect them. You had sworn even so... " He said with his eyes still focused on hers and just these two knew the true meaning of these words. "Breaking this... oath, betraying the humans and me meant shame, meant destroying the honor of not just you, but of all the clan."

"Honor," Demona laughed bitterly. "You speak of the clan's honor, but you took it when you made us HER slaves."

"**I NEVER MADE YOU INTO SLAVES!**" He growled, his eyes flashing white again. 

"**YOU BOWED TO HER!**" Demona screamed on him, her eyes blazing red and just for one moment Goliath thought to see the glimmer of tears in it, but it was just a moment. "**SHE CALLED US BEASTS, HER PET CALLED US UNNATURAL CREATURES AND YOU BOWED TO HER!**" 

Her muscles tensed by this and for a moment Angela believed that she would see her parents fight, but then Demona relaxed.

  
"With this, you didn't just bow in your name but in mine too and that of the whole clan." She accused him.

"I wanted to calm her down if nothing else." Goliath defended himself. 

"No, this was more and you know it," she said. "With this you showed her that you submitted not only yourself, but as leader you submitted the whole clan under her rule."

"To ease her fear," Goliath explained more to the rest of the clan than to her. "To not give her one more reason to scorn us and to hold the alliance that everybody had to make sacrifices for."

"Everybody?" Demona said icily. "I never saw one human making any step back in their position. Just you! Tell me Goliath, when you sent Brooklyn, Broadway, Lexington and Bronx into the rookery when they defended themselves against a human attack how do you justify that?"

"We have been through this once," Goliath said grimly.

"No Goliath, I told you that you were wrong and you simple told me that we had to hold the peace with the humans and then went away to help them anew," she reminded him. "Was this a discussion?"

Goliath glared on his former mate, but realized that he had to calm down since heated discussions were Demona's way, not his.

"Maybe I was too hard to them," he replied calmly. "But we had to hold the peace. When the humans thought that we were dangerous, the possibility that they would smash us during the day would have even been greater." Goliath shook his head. "There was no other choice."

"Well now you know there was one," Demona explained. "Selling them out to the Vikings, living no longer under their rule and in fear to be smashed while we slept."

Goliath's blood flushed through his veins and he wanted to tell her anew that this was unthinkable. But he knew that it wasn't so for her and he knew that many of his siblings wouldn't agree with him on this too, so he had to choose something other.

"You haven't thought further Demona, it seems you never did," Goliath accused her. "The other humans would have taken revenge against us." 

"After that, they would have raided the country like they had done before. By the time they were finished there weren't enough humans left for this," Demona explained. "There were no more humans who had claimed the castle before Xanatos bought it 1000 years later."

"And from what would you have intended to let the clan live on?" Goliath asked her. "The humans shared with us their vegetable and corns, this helped us to survive."

"And how much of it was there?" Demona asked sarcastically. "She lowered our rations every year of her rule and in the last year it was so low that we wouldn't have survived if we hadn't hunted or kept our own supplies. How many would she have left us in her *mercy* the next year?" 

"The medicine... " Goliath started but Demona cut him off.

"What medicine was that?" She asked, "The rests of theirs, which they gave to us instead of throwing it away because they had no need for it?" 

"It helped," Goliath replied simply.

"And was it worth it?" Demona replied calmly, but with brute force in her voice. "The subjugation and the battles we fought for them, was it worth the alliance in your eyes?"

Goliath looked into her eyes and she saw that he was trying to find words for what he felt, what was his very being.

"We had to hope," he said, now it seemed just to her. "And to follow our nature to protect them, for without this we are empty and corrupt." 

"Was Shaman in any way corrupt to you?" Demona asked him with contempt.

"He tried even so to coexist with the humans since he realized that this was the only way in the end. If it's true what you told us." Goliath replied. "A fact you had seemingly seen back then."

"He was killed for this in the end, with the help of the humans we had a deal with." Demona explained angrily. "And he would have not hesitated to wipe the town out if it would have been for the best of the clan.... Would you have?"

Goliath swallowed. This was a question he didn't want to hear, a question which might very well destroy all he had fought for, but for his luck a voice came to his help.

"He hadn't to make this choice sister," Diomedes noted and Demona turned around to face her brother. "If the Princess had intended to kill us then she would have done so in the years before. Sure the humans treated us bad and they were ungrateful and arrogant... But this was no reason to let them all be killed."

"Oh?" Demona asked sarcastically. "Why not?"

Again there was silence in the Great Hall, the night seemed to be full of shocks and despite all that she knew already about her mother, Angela was the one who was hurt most by this. Not just because of the fact that her mother didn't regret the massacre on the humans and didn't show any caring for their lives, but because she still seemed to hated Princess Katharine with a passion and even so the Magus, since Angela had no doubt whom her mother meant with the *pet*. 

"You had no right to simply sentence them to death," Asrial tried to formulate her feelings and that of most... many of her siblings. "We protected them, we... "

"Who was that?" Demona cut her clever sister off while looking deep into these intelligent eyes. "Name me the one human you would have protected with your full heart." Since she knew that her clever sister had spent, and most likely still spent, most of her time in her workshop. 

She turned around to face all the clan. "Please tell me of one human besides the Captain who protected our kind, one who stood up for us and I'm ready to say that I'm wrong." She offered her former clan.

There was silence in the great hall again, this time a tensed one in which many gargoyles tried hard to remember any such human back then. Surely there must have been at least one they knew of, but no one in the last years of Wyvern except that of the Captain of the guard had done so. 

Angela looked around in shock when she realized that no one would tell a name and even when she looked into her father's eyes she saw no answer on this.

~ Is mother right? Didn't our clan have any friends amongst the humans except the one who betrayed them in the end? ~ Angela thought. ~ No! ~

"My father is right!" She nearly screamed while standing up and before she really realized what she had done, all eyes of the clan including her mother's looked on her. 

"The Princess and the Magus have changed... " She started calmer. "You all know this. The Princess has told me and my siblings how much she regrets the way she had treaded you and Magus even gave his life to protect me and my siblings." 

There were some agreeing murmurs in the clan, but most of the faces stayed hard since they remembered all too well how they had been treated by her back then and the fact that she had cared for the clan's children did not weigh so much of these memories.

"The clan-leader's daughter… " Kronos, who had been unusually quiet during the discussion, said and raised, "forgets that this change happened only _after_ the massacre. After the Vikings had shown the princess how much she had needed us. If it had simply gone on, she wouldn't have changed like she didn't in the eight years of her rule before. It would have surely become even worse."

Agreeing murmurs came from great parts of the clan and while looking around, Goliath saw that apart from that of his daughter and his mate Elisa, they were mainly isolated in the clan with his position of trusting in the humans' better nature. Suddenly he realized that Demona wasn't the problem, she was just the stone starting a snowfall, which had started earlier or later by itself... or better, by another stone called Kronos. 

For one moment he saw similarities between Kronos and Demona, but then he realized that they were deep inside different creatures. Demona believed what she said, she believed that she had been right and he wrong while Kronos just said what the majority believed so that he could use it to gain influence in the clan. His silence at the start of the discussion proved this since he had waited until the clan's opinion became clear and finally he would either support Demona or attack her.

Demona seemingly knew this since she studied Kronos with a rather unfriendly look.

Finally, before Goliath could stop the murmurs, Deborah raised her voice never taking her eyes from Demona and with a tone in her voice, which Goliath recognized as the one of controlled anger of a person shortly before the explosion. The rest of the clan recognized it even so and became quiet. 

"So you set the lives of humans below that of gargoyles?" Deborah asked her former pupil by coming nearer, her tail lashing dangerously about the floor. 

"Yes," Demona replied. "I ever did and ever will."

Deborah studied her former pupil more exactly and for just a moment Demona believed to see another thing beside the contempt, maybe sadness.

"And seemingly you set your life at the top of your little hierarchy," Deborah noticed, "since you sentenced everybody here in this room, your whole clan to death."

Demona looked deep into her old teacher's eyes, as she knew this had to come and she knew that the whole clan had a right to demand an explanation. If it just wouldn't be so hard.

"You knew that the Vikings would come that day," Deborah said while slowly circling around her former pupil and studying her with contempt. "And despite the Captain's vow that the clan would be safe you fled since you knew that he had lied."

Demona clenched her fists, she remembered that night as if it were yesterday. She had tried to warn her two siblings but then stopped when she saw the Vikings approaching, stopped to go away. She hadn't planned to run away, hadn't planned to let them all die, but her instinct had led her to the backend of the castle and finally she had glided down to the beach where she had been safe.

"You fled to save yourself instead of saving at least one member of the clan." Deborah accused her while standing now directly in front of her. "Because you were too large a coward to admit your treachery, you were ready to let them die."

Demona knew that this was true, that she should maybe ask everybody in the clan to forgive her, but she couldn't. It wasn't her nature, and it would break her.

"Yes," She replied, not letting her eyes fall from Deborah's since she knew that if she were to look on the faces of those she had doomed to death back then, she wouldn't be able to hold her feelings on the border she had set. She would cry the tears she felt deep inside or simply break down, and she couldn't allow herself to do this, not in front of the clan... never.

"Yes," Demona repeated. Her voice sounded raw since it brought her great trouble to control it. "And for that I'm sorry."

"And this is all you have to say on this," Deborah noticed grimly. "All you have to say... You are not sorry for betraying your leader back then, for the humans killed by the Vikings, nor for the pain that you caused over the millennia. Just for this one fact and if you would have warned the clan, if nobody of them would have been smashed, not even the statues, you wouldn't be sorry."

"No." Demona replied. With this, the hate of them, she could live with but not with these pathetic feelings. "I wouldn't."

Their eyes stayed linked, it was a duel of mind where Deborah wanted to show her superiority over her former pupil, but unlike 1000 years ago Demona didn't even think about giving up or showing the elder gargoyle respect and this made Deborah even angrier.

"Your lack of moral and responsibility is hardly a surprise," Deborah noticed. "Since I know who taught this to you." 

Demona laughed sarcastically, happy that Deborah had moved the discussion on to a place where she could defend herself. 

"It kills you that I took lessons from him doesn't it?" Demona asked with a happy glance in her eyes.

From the murmurs in the clan and the surprised looks her siblings gave her, Demona realized that this hadn't been known by the greatest part of the clan... until now.

"Lass, whom do you mean?" Agamemnon asked his rookery daughter, even though he had a dark suspicion like the most did. "Who taught you what?"

"I thought you would have already pinned it on the blackboard a minute after you heard about it." Demona said to Deborah ignoring the older gargoyle's question and made a short look to Hudson. 

The old soldier had been the only one who knew of this and doubtless he had told it to his mate. He must have even so insisted on her silence or at least not making a common fact about this.

"I had been asked to inform just those who had to know about it in the first hand," Deborah informed her. "I thought the whole clan should have known about this from the beginning, about the first time when you betrayed them and me, but why not now?"

"Do you want to tell it?" Demona asked calmly. "Tell them about my great *betrayal*?"

"No, I think you should do it." Deborah replied with contempt. "At least for one time, admit what you have done and don't run away."

Demona slightly snarled on this insult, but then caught herself as there was no reason for such. She looked to Agamemnon and then around to the rest of the clan especially her siblings, their eyes were curious what their fallen sister would reveal now as Demona knew exactly that it would make them happy. Finally she shrugged her shoulders.

"In the years from 971 until the night of Malcolm's wedding, I was the Archmage's apprentice." She explained to the clan.

To say that the clan was shocked was an understatement. This evening had been full of unveilings, but this one they were totally unprepared for. Many of Demona's siblings besides that of Goliath and Diomedes, who knew this already, looked unbelieving on her while most of the other clan members looked suspicious, remembering the dark nature of the wizard and knowing what he had done on Avalon. 

"You worked together with a clan's enemy?" Agamemnon asked unbelieving, again giving the clan a voice. He couldn't believe that the lass had been so wicked already back then.

"He hadn't been an enemy of the clan back then, indeed he was one of the Prince's advisors." Demona replied calmly. "And I didn't work with him, but took lessons from him."

"Lessons in dark magic," a female gargoyle of the generation above Hudson's concluded with red blazing eyes.

"Lessons in Latin," Demona replied on this. "Lessons in warfare and yes mainly lessons in magic."

"Lass, this is against every tradition," Agamemnon started. "Only the clan teaches its youngsters how to fight as true warriors and magic... "

"Is against the clan traditions, I know." Demona cut him off since she knew that it could have very well been continued until the morning through this special gargoyle. "But seemingly it had some use didn't it? Else not one of you would be here." 

"Oh yes, I think the night when you changed all humans in the city to stone you proved very well what you use your magic for." Deborah said to her. "But why don't you tell the clan of the first time when you used magic?"

Demona looked deep into her old teacher's eyes, she had hoped that her former teacher would let this be something between them, but seemingly she had no intention for thus.

"You're right, why not?" Demona replied coolly. "Well," she said while taking a look to the clan. "I was the one who summoned the creature called the Nuckelavee." 

Again there was a large silence in the clan. Even Goliath and Hudson who since they knew the former facts had stayed calm, couldn't hide their surprise.

"What?" Screamed many clan-members more in surprise than anger while Angela and Elisa informed themselves by their mates of what in heavens name was Demona talking about this time. 

Demona shrugged her shoulders. "It was an accident," she said and nobody, herself included could say if this was an attempt of an excuse.

"Oh yes," Deborah replied sarcastically. "Let me guess, a hard wind you couldn't fight against forced you to land in the Archmage's chamber. Then a mysterious magic lead you to the Archmage's books and forced you to summon the creature... An accident?! HA!"

"I added too much of one sort in a magic mixture, that was it." Demona answered on this coolly. A young Demona had once feared what might happen when this secret would have been revealed to the clan, now it didn't matter for her. "Else the spell would have brought no harm."

"You had nothing to search for there!" Deborah screamed angrily on her. "You know this creature had nearly killed us all and you hadn't the courage to admit this, but then you have forever been such a coward haven't you?"

Demona didn't respond on this, but just looked on her old teacher.

"Would you have allowed it that I took lessons from him?" Demona asked her calmly. "That I learned from him not just magic, but even some damned good hints in warfare, hints which weren't such compatible with the way you wanted us to fight?"

Deborah snarled while she imagined what the Archmage might have taught her.

"**NEVER!**" She growled on her former pupil. "Never would I have allowed this snake to teach one of you, to infest you with his evil... He poisoned your mind."

"We have been through this and..." Demona said bored, but then stopped when something came to her mind. 

She looked to her old teacher as if she had noticed a new facet on her and indeed she had. An evil grin formed on her face and she started to giggle and finally to laugh evilly, something which made some in the room shudder.

"I really must have been a fool," Demona noticed smiling evilly.

"You are a fool," Deborah noted. "That and worse."

Demona didn't let distract her now, she had tasted blood and her prey wouldn't escape from her.

Meanwhile, Owen's cell-phone beeped and the servant took the call. His eye-bridges lifted a bit when he listened to what the voice said, he then went off into the hallways while his master listened to the discussion fascinated.

"When you came to me in Berlin," Demona explained. "When you told me this rubbish about him poisoning my mind I should have known it, at least when I heard from what Coldsteel has done." 

She grinned on her teacher, something which made Deborah feel nausea while Desdemona looked on her sister slightly shocked while asking herself if she had told her too much.

"It is all this?" Demona asked her old teacher. "I, Coldsteel and Roland… This must kill you."

"**WHAT DO YOU MEAN**?" Deborah snarled since she felt a stab in her heart by these names. 

"We were all your pupils, you taught us how to fight and what a *true* gargoyle shall do or not do." She held her look to Deborah as if she had caught her. "And you failed."

These last words came out of her mouth like spells and nobody of the clan dared to breath by this.

"You failed by Roland, you failed by Coldsteel and you failed by me and this kills you." Demona explained viciously. "Oh really, three failures in one generation... You had to have done something wrong!" 

"You speak nonsense," Deborah snarled on her, even when she felt her heart beating like mad.

"Oh yes... " Demona said ignoring Deborah's protest. "Roland the Prince of the thieves, all his rookery siblings, me included, treated him badly when he was a hatchling. All because he was ugly and nobody of the elders, you included, stopped this until he ran away. I hadn't had any second thoughts about that until now, but now... " 

Demona smiled. She ignored the disgusted looks of her siblings and the shocked look of Asrial, nobody could understand why her sister defended him after all these years and after all he had done.

"It would have been your duty like that of all the other elders in the clan to help him, to give him at least one friend in HIS clan, but you didn't." Demona accused her, especially even when it could be seen as an attack on the whole clan. "It has a reason to why he went out with this human child back then, rather then to spend time with his siblings. He had no friends amongst us, just other hatchlings who liked to torment him and when he tried to defend himself the only way he knew how, he was scolded by the elders. Finally I realize why he hated us so and you too."

On this question, she just got an angry glance from her old teacher.

"Then Coldsteel," Demona continued. "He has always been the way he is now, a schemer, jealousy and of dark passion. Not just when he made this scheme to let Othello attack his leader, but even so before... " She didn't see how Javin lowered his head and didn't see the surprise in Goliath's eyes when he remembered how his brother's advice had once helped to temporary remove him from his post as second and nearly led him to break the relationship to Demona back then. 

"But you didn't see it, even when it would have been your duty as his teacher to do so." Demona noted. "Is it your failure? Oh I know you're asking this to yourself since you heard of it."

Deborah looked on Demona with blood-red eyes and slightly snarling, a warning which left her former pupil cold.

"And then there am I," Demona said with a cruel smile. "Surely I don't overestimate myself if I say that I hurt you most."

"You *are* overestimating yourself!" Deborah replied angrily.

~ How dare she... ~ Deborah thought furiously, ~ to think that I would care any more for her than for her other rookery siblings. ~

"I, the betrayer, the killer, the one who seemingly stands against everything you think should define a gargoyle, everything which is important to you." She said looking rather proud of herself. "I didn't follow my clan leader, I ended your oh so important alliance with the humans, I never fight fair or with honor and I killed so much that I can't count it anymore and all this despite the fact that _you_ trained me." Goliath could see how an idea crossed Demona's mind and he hoped that she wouldn't make it worse, that she would be intelligent enough to let Deborah calm down herself... she wasn't. "Or should I say, due to the fact?" 

"UH OH!" Thersities, who felt troubles ahead, whispered.

~ She must truly be mad ~ Goliath, like many other clan members, thought.

This broke the border. It was much, much more than Deborah could tolerate from this gargoyle and snarling she leaped on her opponent. But this opponent foresaw this attack and made a fast step back to escape the deadly claws of her old teacher.

"**STOP!**" Goliath ordered in a booming voice, not interested in this fight now. "This is... "

Meanwhile, nearly the whole clan stood up to separate the opponents. Hudson was despite his age the fastest and laid a claw on his mates shoulder to prevent her from attacking further while Angela went to prevent her mother from making the situation worse.

Angela failed.

"Well old teacher, is that it?" Demona, who was despite the best efforts of her daughter able to come nearer to Deborah, asked.

"Demona this is enough!" Goliath ordered. "You're a guest here... " 

"Mother you've made your point," Angela pleaded. "Stop this, we..."

"That is the reason why you're always blaming the Archmage for corrupting me and I for letting it happen," Demona accused her former teacher. "It is more easy isn't it, to say that I've learned all this from the Archmage. Because if I did, you would have just failed by not noticing that he had corrupted me. But if the Archmage would have just been a minor matter, if I would have just learned the art of magic by him and nothing else, then you must have made larger mistakes with me, like with Roland and Coldsteel." 

They didn't notice anything else other than each other anymore, neither Goliath's voice nor that of any other gargoyle in the room. It was just them two.

"And want you know a really, really funny thing?" Demona asked evilly and ignored the fact that nobody of the surroundings wanted to know it. "You... "

"Miss Destine," a dry voice beside Demona demanded.

In the end she couldn't say what lead her to react on Owens request. Maybe it was partly the magic of the Trickster deep inside the wooden servant which brought her to listen, or maybe the slight tremble in his voice, whatever it was she listened and the whole clan with her.

"What?" Demona asked angrily. She hated that Fay for the humiliation of changing into a human every day more than for the pains it brought and the fact that he was in the form of Xanatos's servant now didn't ease her anger.

"Someone wants to speak to you in a *familiar matter*." Owen replied.

Demona looked at him in shock, a fear rose deep in her heart, a fear which made her claw shake slightly while she took the cell phone.

The whole clan, even Deborah looked at her in unhidden shock. It couldn't be. It couldn't be the person they feared... 

"Hello Lucifia," Demona said with an emotionless voice. She was far, far beyond shock or fear.

"Hello mother!" A voice said happy, not even trying to cover the darkness which lay behind this happiness, a happiness as dark as her eyes.

****

To be continued... 


End file.
